One wonders how these flippers continue to dominate CL the way they do. ;)


They are merely being as "economical" as the market will allow.


There used to be a communist on here that railed against all bike flippers that bought bikes at yard sales, estate sales, and the Goodwill shops then sold them on CL for much higher prices. He said those bikes should be sold to poor people. I said the poor people should've gotten themselves up out of bed and hit the bricks same as the flippers if they want a good deal on a bike. But somehow, the idea of somebody actually having to work to get something was a foreign idea.


Don't rail on these flippers that hoover up all the bikes then try to resell them. Admire instead their quickness and willingness to take risks.

Exactly! Sometimes I lose on a bike, but (hopefully) most of the time, I come out ahead. And, I'm doing something "green" aka Keeping Bikes out of Landfills.

He should have waited a couple of weeks to resell.

Thunder Bay has a stable population of about 120,000 people, however; there are lots of smaller towns dotting the map all over northwestern Ontario and the bicycles flow from those towns also. The annually found number of vintage bicycles is dropping, that's for sure. I have probably taken 2000 vintage road bicycles out of Thunder Bay (TB), in the past ten years. 500+ of those bikes now live in other parts of the world and about 60 are still hanging in The Old Shed. My own personal collection fluctuates between twelve and sixteen bicycles, as a rule.

However, remember one fundamental fact - approximately the same number of bicycles were sold, each year, in Thunder Bay. Today sees about 5000 bicycles, of all shapes, sizes and quality levels, sold annually in TB. That means that lots will come available, for trash or whatever, in years to come. My guess is the bikes will not run out before I do. However...

What is getting pitched away at the Dump is changing. Fewer antiques, roadsters and old road bicycles, find their way there these days. Lots of eighties, nineties and later mountain bikes, with lots of full suspension pieces of poo-poo showing up. And, before long, we will see the department store, full suspension, disc brake babies begin to show, adding themselves to the growing dung heap. New department store bicycles are very poorly made, in my opinion.

That all said, so far this year, the Dump has coughed up about a dozen higher end, to top or the line vintage road bicycles. And one, even though I have it listed on Ebay, my Motobecane Grand Jubilee, is really a keeper and I do hope to keep it. But I am a Flipper, so I will cast my Motobé line into the sea and see what bites.

Yup, that's the formula all right, however; is it pretty hard to do the volume thing, when something is not offered in volume quantities. And, unless I am offering a bicycle "as found", there is no way I can do what needs to be done to a bicycle in two hours. Think about the process and cram what follows into a two hour block of time...

Time to find the bike must be included in one's how much time spent formula (how much time do forum members invest in the search - every day on Craigslist, a bit of time on Ebay a look at the local newspaper, following word of mouth trails, etc and many times with absolutely no reward). To that add the time to go get the bike, transport it home, clean it up (or not), take pictures, prepare those pictures for internet use, write listing copy, answer emails, show the bicycle, and finally let it go to a new home. There is no way I could do that in two hours.

To that, add this...

Not every buyer wants a bicycle, someone else has prepared, or rebuilt, or restored. Lots of people, just like those of us who post on this forum, want to do the work themselves, expressing their own creativity and or sense of ownership in their own way. Selling a bicycle "as found", to those people, is doing what they want. There is nothing wrong with that, as far as I am concerned.

Finally, not all potential vintage bicycle owners have any idea of how to start owning and riding a vintage bicycle. I honestly believe that I am offering a much wanted service, to people who need help getting started. I find vintage bicycles. I clean, refurbish and restore those bikes. I sell them to others, who want the bikes and can afford to purchase them. And, I help to give about 1000 bicycles away, each year, to people who really need what those bikes have to offer.

I am a bicycle flipper and happy to be one. In fact, I am a Super Flipper. I hope that doesn't make me super annoying;-(

Some poor people I know actually work at real jobs and don't have the time to vulture over craigslist all day trying to find a deal on a bike before the flippers have a chance to pounce on it.

That's life, and that's the way it is. - Whodini



The vast majority of yard sales and estate sales occur on Saturday. If these people are working then, they are off during the week and lurk at the Goodwill. If they can't do that, well, that's life, and that's the way it is.

I love that some of you guys are saying it's your "right" to do this, and one guy even mentioned the constitution... Ha. Of course it's your right. Nobody's taking your rights away from you. The OP's just saying he thinks it's a little sleazy (which, by the way, is his right). It's also your right for you 50 year old guys to hit on 20 year old girls at a college bar, but that's a little sleazy too. If it makes you happy, keep doing it until you get slapped.

And not all poor people can get CEO positions. But, do we rage against those in CEO positions? I mean, that's life. Maybe, the person doing the flipping is a poor person, and that IS their job. I know one guy who spent 1 1/2 years trying to get a job after getting laid off. Now, he is scraping by from flipping bikes, until he lands his job.

I agree that some people want an "as-found" bike - not one that has been totally rehabbed by someone else.
But then, they are expecting to pay an "as-found" price.
People who pay full price for an as-found bikes are generally newbies who don't realize what they are (not) getting.

- That is the difference between a Super flipper (like yourself) and a DKO flipper, who simply resells with a huge mark-up.

I'm gonna start browsing essex county CG!!I need the money!

Well put. Hawking on an under-priced bicycle on craigslist so you can take it home and mark it up without doing anything to it just seems skeezy. Logic says there is fundamentally nothing wrong with it, but my gut reaction says that it's skeezy. Get a real job and let some other folks get a deal sometimes.

I wonder if another $200 gets you the second bottle cage back on the bike?

And people wonder why the NYC used bike market is out of control.

I can't find the exact Benjamin Franklin quote, but I believe he once said something along the lines of "Not everything that one has a right to do is best to be done."

That could be said about a lot of things; like fixing people's bikes for free...

You do realise that there are at least 13.9 million people without jobs in the USA and you're gonna whine about someone for making a couple hundred bucks off someone that wants a vintage bike; someone that is likely relatively well-off to have an esoteric hobby like vintage bikes. If the person reading the ad on CL managed to find it all by themselves they can use the googles to look up bike prices and get much more informed, hell they might even find the original ad. No one is getting taken advantage of, many are just too lazy to put the research in.

How much of this anti-flipper sentiment is just sour grapes? I think the only legit criticism is that the bike might not be mechanically sound but that's why any smart buyer would use that as leverage to get a lower price and the seller would likely respond quite well to a low-ball offer knowing he scored sweet in the first place.

last week I sold a bike and 4 hours later it was back up with MY pictures and My description for $60 more.

In a few situations, the term "shameless flipping" would apply. This is the situation as I understand it:

I spoke to a gentleman that had sold a BMX bike. He had someone contact him about his bike. The prospective buyer claimed that he had a bike just like it when he was a kid. He pleaded with the seller to sell him the bike at a reduced price. Relunctantly the owner agreed, but he was satisfied to help someone in need. Within days, the buyer had the bike disassembled and for sale on ebay. Sadly, shameless flippers will scam kind-hearted sellers in hopes of turning a buck.

Some sellers are in the "garage sale" mode: the goals is not to get a "fair market value" for their stuff -- it's to get rid of it! If a buyer gets lucky, spending money for a bike he doesn't intend to ride, and can turn it over and realize a profit? Fine by me.
Personally, I prefer to buy bikes that I'm going to ride. Once in a while I get lucky and find one at a "garage sale" price. Do I feel guilty? Nope.

Back before I knew any better I listed and gave away two bikes I had found on the trash pile and had subsequently quickly fixed up. They weren't expensive bikes but both were nice and only needed minor adjustments and a tube or two to make serviceable. I politely stated in the craigslisting that I wanted the bikes to go to a good home to some child who needed a bike. Both bikes went quickly to "dads" picking up bikes for their kids.

Two months later I went to buy a bike for myself off of craigslist and bumped into "dad". Now I suspect he got both bikes by having a friend pick up the other.

Live and learn.

What, you don't like capitalism?

Really ?
In 21 hours, most of us with decent mechanical abilities could completely dismantle a bike and rebuild it.
There is so much that pictures don't show.
What CAN we see ?
He adjusted the seat. ( he may or may NOT have: Replaced the seatpost, greased the seat tube, sprayed in rustproofing )
He adjusted the bars. ( he may or may NOT have: Greased the stem, removed and greased/replaced the cables, repacked the headset )
He removed a cage. (It may have been damaged. he may or may NOT have: replaced the cage bolts [and other various fasteners]with new/non-rusty ones )

The list goes on... he may or may NOT have: repacked the wheel bearings/bottom bracket, removed the tires and tubes to check them well and check rim strip condition, cleaned and/or adjusted one/both derailleurs, cleaned/ lubed/ replaced the chain... )
I do all of these things to any bike I buy, usually as soon as I get it home.

I'm not saying that he DID all of this, but you can tell he knows his job,just from his pictures. Outside, clean, no distractions, contrasting background, driveside, crank lined with DT.
And mismatched tires (at today's prices, especially) means nothing.

I stand corrected. I should have taken the thirty seconds to Google "Thunder Bay" and learn the facts. Thanks for setting me straight, Randy.

So, your area is at least as populous as the second-largest city in this state, so you do indeed have a good supply pipeline. I wonder if it's rare to have a town dump for a city the size of Thunder Bay -- a town dump that allows people to take away refuse. Here in Dearborn, we have trash pickup that goes to the landfill. But we do have a DPW yard which accepts residents' bulk refuse that isn't allowed in the curbside pickup. I've never seen a bike there, but did find a Kettcar once.

And no, Randy, you are never annoying. I have used a couple of your tips for finding used bikes to great success, time and again. Thanks for posting them in your website.

Exactly. Nothing wrong with listing it as high as you want if you made it a fully rehabbed rideable bike. At $90 it was a gamble worth taking as an "as is" bike. At $299 still being as is but not represented as such it's scummy. I know, buyer beware and all of that but that's not how I like seeing anyone make a buck. An educated buyer would not pay anywhere near that for that bike, even totally rehabbed and tuned so it seems this guys target audience is the uneducated newb who he can con. Wouldn't sit well in my gut knowing someone fresh to bikes had their (probably) first experience buying something from me that they'd soon realize they'd overpayed on and needed to have fixed.

I hope your comment is tongue and cheek, but if not, no big deal. However, it seems to me that capitalism is founded on integrity and honesty. I want to deal with people of integrity, and hopefully, people see me as a person with integrity. If I have to lie or cheat to turn a buck, I would rather collect returnable bottles on the side of the road.

In my humble old opinion, I don't see anything wrong with that action. The person purchased the bike, saw where it was worth more, and relisted it at a higher price. Nobody is TWISTING anybody's arm to buy the bike. It is call "free enterprise". Could it be, where some people look at it, and feel kind of bad because somebody is making a buck? I dunno, just asking the question..http://www.cehoward.net/badteeth%5b1%5d.gif