RaleighSport

Good call, definitely dirt cheap around these parts.

frantik

from what i've heard, you should always ask the people holding the sale if they have any bikes. this is why it helps to go to many sales without the specific intent of finding bikes.

frantik

get it.. DIRT.. lol yeah they are cheap, and plentiful around here too. I'm trying to build up a nice collection before more people catch on

Velognome 

Dusty?

bigbossman 

Be careful with those $15 "Flame" Linears.

I've got an early one I paid $40 for. Sounds great....... but I had to put about $200 worth of parts into it.

Gravity Aided

I remember buying one bike at a rummage sale because the guy was cleaning his garage and saw his neighbor having a garage sale, so he put his kerosene heater and his German 10 speed out just to be part of Garage Sale Fever. Frantik is right, the question "Would you have any bikes around you may want to part with?" can sometimes yield a Huffy, but often in my area a late 70's Trek or Sekai or Raleigh. Be polite and courteous, and you've already got a leg up on 90% of the people they've dealt with that day.

Grand Bois

I got an early Pioneer HT receiver at a garage sale in my neighborhood. It's very optimistically rated at 105 wpc in stereo mode. I had it in the garage for a while, but I replaced it with a 30 watt Marantz that seems to have more power. Now it drives a pair of Minimus 7's for a flat screen TV I bought for the bedroom that had terrible sound. He also had some huge speakers that I declined to take even after he said take them for free. I think they were Dahlquists. They needed a much bigger place than my house.

I have never seen a bike that I had any desire to own at a garage sale.

Is that you, Uncle Bambi?

curbtender

Sad, but the scrap dealers are getting all the metal now. Go to the big scrap yards and buy off the trucks as they come in. May even be worth leaving some of them your #. Garage sales? I do them for fun anyway so I've a group that trades off driving.

Michael Angelo 

SOme Bikes shops around here have started to take "trade in" bikes. I have told all of them that I will come by and look at any steel Roadbike they take in. Has worked really well for me so far......

repechage

I have never had any luck from looking at garage sales. A friend found an Ideor once, but that is as close as I have been to a deal. I did pass on a Kool Lemon ladies Schwinn Varsity for $20. once, so I guess I cannot say I nave never seen anything, but I could not be bothered with that one. I know, I must be a bike snob, but time is money and the effort has to be of some purpose.

wrk101

I pass on garage sale bikes most of the time. Realize that probably 95% of the bikes out there are either dept store bikes or kids bikes.

bigbossman 

It is.

I've found one notable bike at a garage sale, a clean little Miyata 914 with Suntour Superbe bits. I've found many others that were flippable and made a few bucks on them, but they were all mtb's or mixte's. Lower end, but desirable to the city girls. I never found a garage sale bike in my my size that I wanted to own.

I used to have good luck at thrifts, but that dried up years ago. The best of the thrift bikes were my 1980 Mondia Super and a Specialized Expedition, both acquired for $5 each. I also nabbed a Trek 2100 CF bike once for $15 at the same thrift. It used to be a real honey-hole until they cleaned the yard up and went to essentially retail prices.

gomango

Most of them pass through my hands very quickly.

I have two local repair shops that take whatever I find for a reasonable mark up.

I have one though, that I acquired two years ago, that was in its original shipping box.

Still had the twisties on the power cord.

That runs the hifi at the cabin.

So, I use the Phase Linear with a NAD pre amp, Technics 1200 with a Stanton 681EEE, and re-coned original JBL L100s from a local recording studio.

We don't need a tuner anyway, as it is 20+ miles from a radio station.

Mostly garage sale finds.

The kids are pretty sick of hearing dad's Miles Davis albums on rainy days though.

RobbieTunes

How do you find bikes at garage sales?

1. Find the woman in charge.
2. Ask "any old bikes?"
3. Move fast, and drive away before he realizes she sold his bike.
4. Give up sleeping soundly for quite a while.

Also
1. Find the woman in charge.
2. Figure out it this is a divorce garage sale.
3. Ask "any old bikes?"
4. Take your time and ask about old parts, too.

Also
1. Note the kids' stuff lying around (change of priorities).
2. Look for the "I give up" expression on the guy's face.
3. Ask "any old bikes?"
4. Watch him and his wife exchange looks.
5. Make offer with "I know how it goes."
6. Move fast, leave before he changes his mind.
7. The sleep thing.

oldroads

Yes Yes yes.
A lot of times people will think that no one would want that bike that's been buried in the back of the garage for 40 years, so they don't even bring it out when they have a yard sale. And they'd love to get rid of it because bicycles take up space.

wrk101

Found a set of Bose 901s at a thrift shop once. They are waiting for my new workshop build before installation.

I've found quite a bit of old stereo gear at garage sales, like a nice early 1970s, wood case, Sansui receiver. If I had a better outlet, I would pick up more of it.

rootboy 

I've not seen one decent bike at a garage sale. Aside from this one. As found. Just lucky. Try to concentrate on sales being held by older people. I can usually tell if there's any good stuff by driving by at 10 mph. If it's a young couple with kids toys and clothing, I keep driving.

auchencrow

- And to think of all the time I wasted looking at garage sales for a flipper project, when I should have been looking for a full Campy Italian grail bike - in my size.

IthaDan 

Great advice in this thread. All I can offer is to remember to search craigslist for both "bike" and "bicycle" as keywords. Also, check the sporting goods section from time to time, you never know what might pop up there (like my carbon basso).

rootboy 

Sorry, just had to rub it in. I've never found anything even remotely similar at a garage sale before or since. I used to find a number of great old tools at garage sales, but no more. I've sort of given up around here. Every garage sale has a line 30 people long an hour before it opens.

thinktubes 

Tons of good advice in this thread-pretty much covers all the bases.

i would add, focus on affluent areas. Much more like to find something good. Find the most recent census data and check the "dentists per capita" listing.

Poguemahone

The deal is to never look for anything, and then you find things. I don't do yard/garage sales regular like, but find some cool stuff at them now and again.

Kobe 

About a year ago my brother went from driving a concrete truck to driving for a scrap dealer. I thought I would be in heaven, it can't get any better than that I thought. Most of his pick ups are industrial waste so he does not pick up many bikes. By the time he gets back to the yard if he sees something decent it is buried at the bottom of the pile.

In the past year he has picked 4 bikes for me. Three of them were Fuji's, what do people have against Fuji's to just trash them for $3.

I was speakin with the owner of a local bike shop that specializes in old bikes. The scrappers know to swing by his shop and he gets to pick the best bikes for $10-$15 each. I think I am going to just start hanging out in front of his shop and offer them double.

DIMcyclist

Also, if you do your looking on CL, you'll never find a deal like: "Classic handmade Cinelli, late '70s; mint condition, Campagnolo components, $40." It doesn't exist.

Anyone selling a classic for cheap won't know what it is, ergo the listing will be pretty ambiguous, more like "Old 10 speed bike," or, "Dad's/ older brother's/ cousin's/ ex-roommate's/ bike; taking up space in the garage, etc."

Just last week I spotted a '91 Fuji 'Black' Ace in reasonably good shape, being sold in a 2-bike deal (with an '86 Diamondback hardtail) for only $75. Listing was "Two old bikes for $75," or something similar, without listing the brands. And that ad was up for five days before someone apparently bought it.

hikerinmaine

All great ideas, but one other thing to keep in mind is to head to the more affluent section of town for the yard sales. They buy the higher end bikes and treat them like trash, so they don't mean much. I bought my Cannondale Black Lightning off a guy driving a Range Rover, talked him down from $65 to $50 because the tires were flat and he couldn't air them up. It hadn't been ridden in years so to him it was just some old bike, when was like new when I washed the years of dust off it.

The Ti Merlin I just got was a similar deal, if the owner knew what they had it never would have gone so cheap. The Centurion and Nishiki were literally throwaways in need of cables and chain that sat for years without being ridden. I can't tell you how many bikes I've found across the years for literally nothing because of neglect, including some sweet Peugot mixte's.