Not in my opinion. It is the buyer who drives the price up. Supply never dictates price, demand does. As demand increases, so to does the price per unit, unless supply steps it up to match the increased demand. As supply increases, the price per unit drops, unless there is an increase in demand.

But that is just my opinion. My other opinion is to bring this thread to an end. After all, it has been done to death and we will all have a chance, to do it again, in a week or so.

Awww.

Wait a minute... Who passed gas?!

I purchased my '72 Schwinn from a shameless flipper.

He posted it as a '69 Schwinn, so he obviously did not know Schwinn's more than the next guy. However, he was honest. He told me that he has a couple friends that he takes dumpy bicycles to, they replace cable housing, make sure everything works safely on it, and they sell it for a profit. He also told me he re-taped the bars on this one. I asked him to bring the Motobecane with him that was another listing of his. While I enjoyed the look of the Motobecane more, he admitted that he was having issues with the seat post, so he would not feel bad if it did not sell.

Anyways, long-story short, he was an honest fellow, and I would definitely do business with him again. I'd also like to know where he gets the dumpy bicycles haha.

the entire medical insurance industry makes profits off sick people.. i find that immoral

selling a bike for a $100 profit, not so much

I swear to God this is my last post in this stupid thread:

Yeah. It's cute when people start carping about "immoral" or "dishonest" profits. That is an argument that is invariably made by someone who has made bad life choices or is simply unwilling to work hard to make themselves successful. Are there people who make money by doing dishonest things? Sure there are. But we have losers who protect their fragile self esteem by telling themselves that businesses can only make profits by ripping people off. They pretend that EVERY business owner is immoral if he makes any money. You wouldn't know a moral code if it bit you on the ass.

I get so sick of people calling me "fortunate". Fortunate my ass.

I created my first job when I was 11 years old. Cutting grass and saving my money enabled me to buy my first car when I was 13 years old. I learned how to work on it myself so that I could afford to drive it. I had owned my car for three years by the time that I got a license to drive legally at age 16.

I learned from my Father. He was a good man, but chose a career that demanded hard work and didn't pay much. And when my Mom died it opened my eyes when he had to borrow money to bury her. At his urging, I decided to make better choices that would make my labor more valuable.

I went to school for 7 years beyond high school... all while simultaneously working a full time job and one part time job. And after I finished school, I worked 2 full time jobs until I decided to start my own business. Now I work only about 60 or 70 hours a week. A 40 hour work week is for losers... it takes much more to be successful.

It makes me want to vomit when people sit around and whine because they can't get a break. Make your own break.

One day you'll figure it out. Or you'll get run over by someone like me who has put in the effort to be a success.

Cool story bro.

Whoa!!!! Haha. Someone has a serious chip on his shoulder or is trying to get the thread locked by trolling.
I'm ready for this to be locked personally.

+1 Buyers determine price, not sellers.

You see supply and demand swings all of the time on ebay. All of a sudden, some obscure, rare item sells for big bucks on ebay. Then the next week, you will see dozens of these "rare" items, none bringing in the price of the week before.

Not when you have one or more resellers covering a small market area picking up all sub-$100 bikes and reselling them at a marked up price with no value added. You've effectively removed the lower end market and artificially increased prices. Brokers do it all the time. And keep in mind CL is local, not national like ebay.

But....to bring this closer to reality, I see the bike is still listed. Its a shame. For $90, someone could have bought a good bike, and still had some $$ to take to the LBS and make sure its safe. At $299, it will likely sit for quite awhile.

I once picked up a Univega Viva sport for $40.00. Re-wrapped the bars, hosed it off, sold it for $175.00 in two days.

Who here wouldn't take an easy $135.00? I'm not in the position to buy up cheap bikes and bestow them on the less-fortunate out of the benevolence of my heart. The Fuji hybrid that I put $120.00 in and sold for $95.00 got me no sympathy. The lesson was mine alone to learn.

I'm not one to troll through yard sales for weeks on end, looking for a good deal on an old bike. Or prowl the Goodwill stores every day, hoping for a strike. My time is more valuable to me. This is why I love eBay. In minutes, I've got thousands of bikes to choose from, courtesy of hard-working flippers all over the globe. And every once in a while, there's worth looking at on the local CL. Some of the bikes are outrageously priced, so I watch them like a train wreck to see if anyone bites. Others have terrible pics or sketchy descriptions. Some are drop-dead gorgeous and have swarms of bidders. Others pique my interest and I throw out a bid; like this one:



I didn't know squat about it and apparently nobody else did either as I got for what I considered a low offer.

I don't know or care what the seller paid for the frame; he made it available for me to buy, something that would have been impossible before eBay.

^^^^^^ Seat tube looks bent.

Just an illusion.

I think some of the issue is that the pre-flip price was published knowledge. Had we not known what he paid, and had he not been so flamboyant in posting it the next day in the same arena, I doubt anyone would care.

If I buy something from you I really don't care what you paid for it. But if you tell me you paid way less than what you sold it to me for, it's certainly not going to give me the warm-fuzzies about the transaction, especially if I'm paying retail.

You don't visit a store and they post the price they paid. That would just eventually piss you off.

Your bootstraps story is nice. I'm glad things have worked out for you through hard work (and luck). Not everyone is able to do that. They were born in the wrong city/country/time, had the wrong color skin, had a bad stroke of luck, etc.

On the other hand, there's an rather large elite that has more than you have through almost no work. I'd run out of fingers and toes counting those I know personally that have done less work in their entire lives than it sounds like you have in one year, and will never go hungry barring a revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Also, you may want to change your signature. George Orwell was a committed socialist!

This is a remarkably good point, in my opinion. Not only does it rub salt into the buyer's wound, but my guess is it also negatively impacts the new seller's opportunity to sell the bicycle so soon after purchase.

i hate it when a seller leaves the old ad up when you're trying to resell the bike

Thank you randy.

I actually put a lot of thought into why this particular situation annoyed me, I'm a logical person, mostly . I understand markup and making a profit, I ran a business for 20 years. Buy something and sell it for more, right?

We know that this happens to us every single day, we know the products we buy cost the seller less than what we are paying. The main difference here is that we KNOW what the flipper paid and what the markup-for-effort eventally became. I doubt we'd shop anywhere charging retail prices if the retail outlet posted their unit cost of what we were purchasing.

There is a reason companies take extreme measures to keep their wholesale prices secret. It's good business.

I'm curious what people who would argue with this think about speculation in other markets.

I work 90 hours a week.

Will someone please buy the bike the OP mentions?
It is still up for sale at $299 and the flipper is in danger of losing his "shameless" status if he has to drop his price.

I have thought long about this, maybe a "strip club" owner is making a legal but immoral profit.
That's about all I've got, and it is strictly personal, 'cause a lot of folks don't think it is immoral at all.

Yeah, well I work 200 hours a week! And I live in a rolled up newspaper in a hole in the ground!

I completely agree. I can't imagine people actually having a problem with someone selling something for a profit, but it just seems in bad taste to sell something to people for quite a bit more when it was just available to those same people for a lot less (and nothing was done to it). But like BBM said in another thread recently, mark-up is irrelevant, value is what counts.

You've never been to a swap meet of any sort, huh?

I see where you're going, but it's not quite the same thing.
And I do enjoy a good swap meet.