My Wife began keeping detailed spreadsheets of all the bike flips I was doing. I am not so organized and did it for fun and to make a few bucks. After doing a few with her record keeping (money and time), I was always coming out ahead but some bikes (and I would take anything), just were not worth the time and effort, especially if tires and tubes were needed. Other bikes were amazing cash cows and those feel great to restore and sell to a new happy home. This summer, I had a few quick wins with yard sale bikes. Buy them for $20 and spend two hours cleaning, lubing and tuning and sell the very next day on Craigs for $100. I have found that anyone will pay $100 for an older but working bicycle that is not a box store brand. I could have held out for more money on some but the hunt and quick turnaround is really what I enjoy the most.

Overall, the exact record keeping and profit sheets that my Wife keeps takes some fun out of it. That's her thing though...

Well, certainly you can get perfectly good tires for $15 each, and tubes for $4 each and bar tape for $5 if you shop carefully. It's probably a good idea to assume that $50 or so per bike is a minimum to add to anything to make it rideable and hence flip-able. And that assumes all the major parts work.

That's just tires and tubes. you forgot cables, bearings, bottom bracket, brake pads, chain, freewheel or cassette and then there is the time for a bike that needs all those parts. If it's a bike that has a typical resale value of $150 it's pointless to even try. Best to donate it to a co-op or strip it for parts.

Oh I agree with that - If I couldn't sell a bike for at least $200-250 more than it cost me, or at least $150 if it's in really rideable condition already, I wouldn't even try to flip it for profit.

I don't make a living at buying and selling bikes. I enjoy the hunt, and the negotiations, not the travel distance or time. I buy to ride and sell when I find something else, so I have ridden lots and lots of bikes with lots and lots of fun and made a few buckaroos in personal flipping. Just about every purchase is my size or close, this way I can make an evaluation before keeping or selling, which not a whole lot of buying and selling

i had a local scrap yard keep bikes aside for me and I would pay $10 to $20 for each bike, spend an afternoon or so tuning them up to make them roadworthy and then sell them, aiming for a $100 profit. I sold a couple hundred bikes this way over a 5 or 6 year period, using the profits to fund my own bicycle fleet. Profitable and fun, I'd still be doing it but the scrap yard was sold to a condo developer.

for anyone who flips a fair volume of bikes spreadsheets are essential. Mine is set up with formulas, all I do is enter the number and it spits our my profit/lose per bike and as a whole


+1. It's just a mater of how high up do you want to go. The higher up the higher the risk. what do you do when you dis-assemble that vintage campy record bike only to find the BB spindle is bad, and the axle cones are shot?

Are you willing to drop $100, $500, $1,000 or even $2,000 on a flip? Are you willing to make $250 on a $2,000 bike?


+1. Right there. It's all about the hunt for me which is exceedingly difficult in Tampa due to the 4-6 ultra hardcore flippers here.

My latest 5 bike flip netted me a a pristine 'Elite Paramount' with less than 500 miles on the clock and cost basis of negative $800 or so.

Nice article...good to find one that's been bumped up.
As far as flipping, the bottom line is to enjoy what you're doing.
I sold about 6 bikes last year during one of my 'bike'' obsessed periods, and did real well on all of them.
Living in Florida is a good thing, because people bike all year 'round.
Most people in these parts don't have real deep pockets, so a basic single speed coaster bike is what most of them are looking for....I've converted a bunch of mountain bikes or mixte dual purpose bikes into single speed. No hills here, no need for shifting gears...besides, who really want's do deal with derailleurs anyway. lol
Now, it's a year later, and I'm starting again....I look at it as a way to get paid to learn another new skill.

The more bikes I tear down and rebuild...or even paint, the more I know, I gather bike tools as I need them. and it can be a profitable, fun JOB even...as long as you have patience and can hold on to stock for a bit. Most bikes sell on Craigslist, for sure.
I also have an online shop, but that's for other stuff...vintage stuff



It's way more important to enjoy every day and get into what you're doing, don't bother chasing money, or trying to be the big headed bike man in town, every place has a few of those nine irons around.

Have fun...life goes fast..
Franco

Interesting thread.

I have a philosophical question that might draw a lot of heat but I really don't mean offense to anyone, just something I think about.

When I look at CL I see a lot of C&V related listings that are crazy expensive (to me) and I assume many are flipping or riding the trend upwards that it creates. If an aggressive flipper works a local market they can denude a lot of reasonably priced transportation for lower income people. Good for the individual flipping but bad for people looking to buy an inexpensive bike. Some may say you should be willing to pay for value but in reality, many of those expensive bikes were cheap bikes a few days or weeks earlier. I know it's an unpopular POV but I just think many of those listings represent a weirdly artificially raised market place created by the concept of purchasing for profit and not for actually seeking a riding bike. Yes.. no?

While some flippers may help to inflate the market, I find that it is not flippers that do that...but...individuals that do not know what they have. They watch TV shows like American Pickers...and believe that a well used Schwinn Varsity, due to being "barn fresh" is worth $400. I have seen so many people put a bike on CL at an outrageous price...and it stay there...for YEARS! Also...the once or twice I have tried to help people understand the true value of what they have...I have been rebuffed as "not knowing what you are talking about"...but...having bought/sold/moved more than 300 bikes in the last few years...and listening to the wise owls on this forum...I think I do understand the value of most any bike in my market...

Seller does not determine price. Price is determined by what the market will bear.

Why should the bike market be kept artificially low? Should we put price caps on it?

+10 from one of the most astute BF pundits

Consider the set of all bikes at and below an arbitrary price say $100. Consider the market to be an arbitrary geographical area, say 25km radius around your city hall. Consider the market to be CL, Kijiji, word-of-mouth, teeny ads in newspapers, yard sales and so on. Flippers are only interested in the sub-set of bikes that can be resold quickly with minimal additional expense(tires, cables), Labour(cleaning, Pickup, Selling process). Your speculative question essentially is: Is the subset of potential Flippers bikes a large-enough subset of the set of all bikes under $100 to negatively impact the set of buyers looking for simple transport?

Happily, this question can be empirically answered by examining your local CL. In my view the world is awash with $100 bikes that make flippers and collectors cringe. Plenty left for those needing cheap transport AND the metal recyclers.

Your question is really excellent (at least to me), since it can be generalized into: "What are the unintended consequences of bike flipping?"

daf1009 said:
While some flippers may help to inflate the market, I find that it is not flippers that do that...but...individuals that do not know what they have. They watch TV shows like American Pickers...and believe that a well used Schwinn Varsity, due to being "barn fresh" is worth $400. I have seen so many people put a bike on CL at an outrageous price...and it stay there...for YEARS!

daf1009 is pointing-out a distortion in "normal market forces" that uninformed people want vastly more for their bikes than the market supports. This must be an unintended consequence of "American Pickers", "Storage Wars" as well as traditional human delusion.

Good answers.
I like the idea of a coop and am looking for one in my area. Like most I like to fix up bikes but honestly don't want the hassle of selling online - I'd rather pay it forward by donating to a good use/cause which I do with friends etc...

I do agree with the crazy prices of people just "hoping" they have a treasure but when I look at CL I see vintage era bikes actually at lower prices.. what I might consider reasonable if I were a person looking for a ready to ride solution. What are inflated are the old road bikes.

I do agree the whole American Picker thing is at play as well. The same thing happens in general at our local flea market. It used to be that it was a good place to go and buy stuff cheap that people were getting rid of. Now there are "professionals" who have tables and walk around early buying all the good cheap stuff and reselling it at an inflated price. Same thing. Good for them but it creates an artificial market (in a sense) and puts a different vibe to the experience.

If flippers buy bikes that require little investment to make serviceable, those are the same bikes that most people who just want to ride would buy. Ideally, a refurbisher would buy the real klunkers and bring them back from the grave.

Again, just observations on the scene that I note and wonder about. Not a put down of flippers in any way.

Thank you.

I'd put me in the top 10,000 of the usual posters in C&V.

And thank you for popping my pundit cherry. I feel dirty, yet exhilarated.

I usually always have at least one bike that I'm working on to flip. I really like buying bikes that are not my size or girls bikes. Takes away all the temptation to add it to the fleet.

That's a cool idea. My problem is falling in love with every bike I'm sure I'm just going to tinker with and pass along.

When that happens its an exceedingly small segment of the overall market. Lower income people will always have a big supply of bicycles. WalMart, KMart, Pawn Stores, Flea Markets.....the supply is endless.

And please don't derail my thread...its old, there's a 2015 version out there. Keep it 'on target' please.

Humm... You know on a discussion forum sometimes threads wander around a subject, especially when it's two years old. And if your going to comment with an observation on my post it's pretty weird to then try to say I shouldn't be making it in the first place. Sort of like trying to have the last word.

Like bike prices, why not let the market place decide on the value of content instead of trying to artificially control the environment.

I was being polite....that's why I answered. Keep it on the tracks.....

Looking at what I've sold and what will be refurbished in time, I will have rehabed 16 bikes come the end of the year. Hardly high volume, but a steady amount.
I focus mostly on lower mid-level steel road bikes and entry level - mid level steel mtbs and hybrids.
I have found that I price lower than our local bike collective, and the product is better.
I frequent the local collective, have helped out, and have donated everything from parts to fully refurbished bikes so I see their ever changing inventory and can say for certain that the work is lower.
I donated a bike a month ago that I had listed for a few weeks on CL. They priced it for 60 higher than I had it listed for.


My point in all of this is that sure some are running up the prices. But many others aren't. And those economically diaadvanteged you mention are sometimes paying more for less at the local collective.


I focus on the typed of bikes that I can get off of CL for a decent price while still ensuring a profit once it's refurbished. Higher end would be great, but they just aren't out there on my local CL.

While it shouldn't be kept artificially low, it doesn't benefit anyone to clog the market with stale inventory that never moves. Project that out to our economy- it benefits nobody.
Having the same 50 bikes relisted every 3 days for over a year while the rest of the market moves is absurd. And in those cases, the seller is actually determining price. They are just determining a price which nobody wants to buy. That'd be fine if They then left the market eventually. Problem is, they never leave.
Odd group of people.

Thanks for the reply Mst. I like your perspective and am trying to emulate it in my own small way. I think I will start a new thread about this because it is diverging from the OP.