where have all the old bikes gone?
Discussion
Something occurred to me yesterday during my daily 8hr procrastination session...
With cycling on the up these days, bike shops seem to be doing a roaring trade. Yes, a lot of their business is new customers who haven't had a bike before (or not for many years), though I am also willing to bet that a lot of the bikes they sell are to people who already own/have owned (at least) one.
While I understand and approve of the logic behind n+1, I am not entirely sure that all old bikes can be accounted for stuffed down the bottom of gardens or up in the rafters of garages and the like given the volume of new ones that are now being sold.
So what is happening to all of the old ones? Is there a thriving second hand market that I am unaware of? Or are they all simply scrapped or recycled?
With cycling on the up these days, bike shops seem to be doing a roaring trade. Yes, a lot of their business is new customers who haven't had a bike before (or not for many years), though I am also willing to bet that a lot of the bikes they sell are to people who already own/have owned (at least) one.
While I understand and approve of the logic behind n+1, I am not entirely sure that all old bikes can be accounted for stuffed down the bottom of gardens or up in the rafters of garages and the like given the volume of new ones that are now being sold.
So what is happening to all of the old ones? Is there a thriving second hand market that I am unaware of? Or are they all simply scrapped or recycled?
TvrJohn said:
They are all in Yorkshire, painted yellow, and hanging off buildings every where, after the Tour de France !
And now slowly returning to barns and sheds to lay up, yellowed, for eternity!Annoyingly, some of the yellow bikes would have made lovely restos pre- yellowing, like the lovely rod-braked triumph seen in Swaledale.
Fair do's.
Is eBay really the best source for second-handers then?
In my dallying today I've been wondering if it would be worth setting up something roughly equivalent to PH/Autotrader for push bikes... hmmm.
Edited to say:
Gumtree make would make more sense (to me anyway) given its more of a local thing rather than buy and ship - I'd always want to see a bike before committing to buy. That said, when I have looked before, there has not been a great selection on there, and it generally seems to be populated with oiks who are good at prising padlocks off of garden sheds.
Is eBay really the best source for second-handers then?
In my dallying today I've been wondering if it would be worth setting up something roughly equivalent to PH/Autotrader for push bikes... hmmm.
Edited to say:
Gumtree make would make more sense (to me anyway) given its more of a local thing rather than buy and ship - I'd always want to see a bike before committing to buy. That said, when I have looked before, there has not been a great selection on there, and it generally seems to be populated with oiks who are good at prising padlocks off of garden sheds.
Edited by ccr32 on Tuesday 19th August 11:19
Certainly for MTB's there's a thriving second-hand market, it's pretty 'steady' too if that's the term with most things have a pretty known value (although Pinkbikers are a law unto themselves in that respect).
I have to admit the last two bikes / frames I've bought have been second-hand, I just can't stomach having over £4k for the latest thing, when the last thing is 25% of the cost - yes it'll have lots of marks, but what MTB doesn't and there's usually some mechanical calamity to fix - but I just can't pay 4 thousands pounds or more for a push-bike, either financially or morally.
I have to admit the last two bikes / frames I've bought have been second-hand, I just can't stomach having over £4k for the latest thing, when the last thing is 25% of the cost - yes it'll have lots of marks, but what MTB doesn't and there's usually some mechanical calamity to fix - but I just can't pay 4 thousands pounds or more for a push-bike, either financially or morally.
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