Many of us have been there and done that. Here was one big one I missed, wasn't the first, won't be the last:
1963 Bianchi Specialissima????
That Specialissima was selling for $150 on OfferUp and I was hours too late. Sold and showed up on eBay for $700 BIN days later. Then popped up on
Craigslist for $1550 not long after that. It lasted on CL for a few weeks and I never saw it again.
some bits of consolation to share:
Edit - First, a few weeks after that "miss" above, a damn nice Behringer showed up. I chatted up the seller just to say, "Damn that's nice! But out of my price range, good luck with the sale, it's a cool piece of history!" We kept chatting, he told me to come check it out anyway, and sent me home with it on the cheap-cheap (considering) and a nice mid-upper end 80s Peugeot for free.
Thread.
Then, I had a huge score
with these two a few weeks later. Turns out both were worth far more than I expected and I wouldn't have had the $$$ or the space had I bought the Specialissima! Sold both of the other bikes and some NOS parts through a broker, untouched, for over $5k which I sorely needed at the time due to hurricane damage on the house. It was a blessing, to say the least.
Third, I had another big miss recently that left me kicking the ground because someone beat me to the punch. A few days later, someone else who beat me to a listing did something that really pisses a lot of sellers off and it resulted in me getting a killer deal. Smoking deal similar to the Specialissima popped up on CL for $150 (again!). The seller knew damn well it was worth more but wanted to find a good home for it quickly. I was 2nd to reach out to the seller, but 1st person made a sight-unseen offer for $100 w/o any questions or giving a valid reason. "Will you take $100 for it?!". Everyone involved (buyer/seller) knew it was worth 3x the lowball offer whereas I let him know the ask price was "more than fair" in my response. Texted me 15 minutes later, and some hours later it was mine. Sat and chatted for a while on pickup, guy was ex-Army, we swapped some stories and he sent me home with a box of stuff including a cool-looking vintage wheel truing stand that was "taking up space".
Moral of the story: Stay positive, there's always another catch, and don't stop looking just because you missed a big one. Sometimes things fall through for the better.