cbrstar

I've been collecting for a while now and COVID has really made prices go insane. Bmx's that used to sell for $500-$800 only two years ago are now selling for $1500 to $3000 and even possibly more. I imagine the market will eventually fall like they did with muscle bikes 15-20 years ago. And it's things that people don't think about that go for the stupidest money. Have some 40 year old dry rotted tires that still look nice? $500+. I think I maybe was having a mid life crisis when I woke up one day looking for the Bmx I had as a kid. It took me over a year to buy my first one because I had no idea that there was 40 some flippers in my city constantly looking for them.

I'm sure there's some road bike collections that put things like this to shame but here is one interesting collection.



They are all Raleigh's from the 80's. Here in Canada Raleigh's were considered junk and worthless for a long time. I passed up quite a few over the years thinking they were not worth my limited storage space. But in the UK they sell for really good money!!! So if you are willing to take the chance and ship to the UK flipping can be profitable.




Facebook has really changed the game. Just this one page has 4k members/ potential buyers.

With road bikes though I imagine that it must be harder and more difficult to ship things.

Road Fan

Why can't you set up an LLC, maybe "Bark Eater's Baffling Bike Flipping, LLC," and with that tax number, apply to QBP as a bicycle seller to the public?

Better: "Bark Eater's Fine Bicycles, LLC?"

bark_eater 

Volume and insurance.

Road Fan

Ok, so you want it to make money! That's different!

bark_eater 

I have a well established history of getting paid reasonable money to do cool stuff, but I'm not fooling myself with the idea that there's even a rainbow here, much less a pot of gold.

'02 nrs

all the daily reposts same-ole-same-ole on Detroit cl have to translate that flippers are not raking in the $$$.https://detroit.craigslist.org/search/bik?

SurferRosa

The "around here" piece of the story is rather important.

homelessjoe

This is an easy one.....spend years collecting a barn full of very desirable higher end bikes then wait for a pandemic....any one can do it

balto charlie

Exactly, buy low, sell high. Currently a sellers market, I want to buy a new bike but will wait.

jjhabbs 

Hi,
I am friends with a professional flipper. I mean he buys bulk from Salvation Army and other places. He would do 250-300 a year. 2020 was extremely tough. Many found that their bicycles went up in value big time last year. Many sold them themselves. Values also went up. We might or might not get excited over seeing a 1988 schwinn world sport but there is a huge market for them for basic commuters in the city. Many shops sell them regularly. There were tons of them everywhere but last year they got sucked up in the bike boom. Yes there are many still out there but its just tougher.

Unless your getting your tires, tubes, cables, casings, HB tape etc at wholesale its hard to make any money. Unless you find someone ignorant that just sells you their bicycle for dirt.

JJ

NatusEstInSuht

I think the best way to make money is to part the bikes out. I've only flipped three bikes - a 1980s celeste made-in-Japan Bianchi, a 1980s Miele and an early 1990s Bridgestone. This was five years ago mind you, but I paid $250 CAD for the Bianchi, $150 CAD for the Miele and $200 CAD for the Bridgestone. All were found on Craiglist or Used.ca in Victoria B.C., none had detailed descriptions or good photos, and nor were my size. The Bianchi ad did not even have any pictures.

All three framesets were in decent condition (no rust or dents) but required work as the paint and decals had some marks and the Bianchi's rims and tires were in rough shape. So instead of spending time and money on new cables, tires, housing, brake pads, bar tape and chains, it was far quicker and cheaper to remove the components clean them along with the frames and wheelsets. So that's what I did. Stripped the frames including the bottom brackets and headsets, removed the Bianchi's hubs from the rims and cleaned everything up, including the freewheel that was on the Bianchi's rear hub.

I put the frames up for sale locally as I did not want to deal with the hassle of shipping larger parcels. A clean, polished frame, reasonably priced, with a detailed description and good photos can sell fast. And mine all sold within days of me posting the ads. I received $250 CAD for the Bianchi frameset (Tange tubing), $125 CAD for the Miele (Tange Infinity I believe) and $150 CAD for the Bridgestone (Ishiwata EX tubing). I also sold one of the wheelsets locally for $100 CAD and kept the other for myself. Two of the saddles, along with the handlebars, stems, seat posts and water bottle cages were also sold locally ($100 CAD or so all totaled).

And here's where I made the bulk of my profit - the groupsets. The Bianchi was equipped with Campagnolo Triomphe including the hubs (strange to me as it was a Japanese frame, but it was a Canadian-market bike), the Miele had Shimano 105 while the Bridgestone was shod with Shimano 600. I placed these groupsets on eBay, with non-reserve auctions starting at $100 USD each. The Campagnolo groupset sold for around $400 USD, the Shimano 600 was about $300 USD while the Shimano 105 grossed me about $250 USD. As a bonus, the Bianchi came with a celeste Turbo saddle which I also sold on an eBay no-reserve auction for about $75 USD.

After everything was done and eBay and PayPal fees were paid, I netted $1,000 CAD or so on the three bikes for about 10 hours of 'work', I wasn't overly greedy, I didn't waste time or money fixing what needed to be fixed, I did not hoard the bikes, and I treated it as strictly business. Could I have made more money if I put the framesets on eBay or had higher, "buy it now" prices on the groupsets? Maybe, but it would have taken more time and effort and I just wanted quick, no-hassle sales.

Making money comes down to being smart, being lucky and not getting sentimentally attached to a bike.

bark_eater 

I dont have the link handy, but there is an "Uber" for bike mechanics. You need some proof of basic competency, and they will list your services, and they take a percentage off the top for all services rendered. And they cover insurance. If they could provide access to a QBP discount that could be a pretty good deal. I don't remember seeing any business volume requirements, but there probably is a minimum in the fine print. I checked out some of the "local" people on the service and a few had some sort of inventory of flip bikes on their personal websites, assuming they would get web traffic from the service.

PS: https://velotooler.com/

Rocket-Sauce 

I don't do any of this to make $$, but rather to spread the love or enthusiasm. Usually it takes the form of helping a friend or family member get into cycling. They will ask "What bike should I buy?" Or "Should I buy a Trek Madone or the Specialized Tarmac?".

I will always reply that they should buy a used bike -we in the Boston area are spoiled in this regard- and I will help. I will help find the "diamond in the rough" and then do all the necessary work to get it road worthy, safe, comfortable and modernized. After they put a few hundred miles on it, we will reassess if cycling is for them, if they want to "upgrade" to a new bike, or keep the old one. Often, they stick with the older-but-modernized bike.

I always preface this by pointing out that if they decide that cycling is not for them (after riding it of course!), they can usually sell their new-to-them bike for close to at we put into it, sometimes more. If they buy a new bike and decide to sell, they will take that huge depreciation hit themselves. .

I go with them to buy the bike, carefully inspect the bike and help negotiate a fair price. Then it comes home with me where I will replace the consumables if needed, true the wheels, re-grease everything, and deep clean the whole thing. Get it looking and riding like brand new.

• Aliexpress for cables, brake pads, tubes, bar tape (black!), saddles.
• Amazon for freewheels/cassettes (Sunrace, Tiagra...). Easy to keep it under $20
• I really like Shimano Tourney A070 7 speed brifters, or Micro**** for 8-10 speed.
• Tires: I usually splurge here (but not more than $30 per tire) for whatever is on sale at one of the UK vendors. I generally like to stuff the widest tire the frame will allow to help smooth the ride. (the last bike I built for a friend, I used Maxxis Detonators -which I always thought an odd name for a tire )

Then I will help fit the bike correctly and go with them on their first few rides to help them learn the local roads. I am convinced so many people drop cycling or don't even start because they have no idea where to ride!

bark_eater 

Sounds like your creating $3-4-500 bikes. I've got a couple cosmetically challenge frames that I'd like to get powder coated and build up, but not on spec. First on the list is a Miyata Triple Cross. Pumpkin Orange with moustache bars....

Kekec1965

You must've spent a tad bit more on turning this old lady into electric bike or is this a new way to auto pump the tyres?

On a serious note as reply to OP - I believe most people here did not intend to become 'flippers', just that they like what they see and if the price is wright they go for it. Either they like the bike or not, there was somethiung that attracted them to it, perhaps a frame, wheelset, other gear or just an old Brooks saddle, which if bought separately would cost pretty much the same as the whole bike (yes I did it couple of times myself, the saddle on the bike was worth much more than the price of the bike). It helps they also like to fiddle with old bikes, a lot that is! You then sell on with for some profit, sometimes donate or give for free to a fellow Forum member or keep in parts bin for a rainy day or that elusive bike build you are waiting for to come for the last 10 years and more Basically all our bikes are 'free' as we made some money on what we sold and bought what we need. Mind you, we never take into account what the losses we made or extra stuff we bought. We think like our wives and girlfriends when buying a new pair of shoes or a designer bag "It was on sale for $300 less than retail price, so I SAVED all that money by buying THREE of them' For people like that a new word should be used instead of flippers IMO - more like saviours or purveyors of nice things in life..

Ex Pres 

Want to make money? Be a DKO
Still have to buy cheap and know what buyers in your area will buy, however.

r0ckh0und 

The Schwinn Impact was purchased from a local scrapper for $25 and I invested maybe $10 and my time. I expect to get about $100-$125 in the springtime. The DB was a curb find that I also invested about $10 worth of stuff that I had on hand. It sold for $100 last summer and had quite a lot of interest.

Dylansbob 

I stopped by one of my favorite old thrift store haunts this morning. I'd probably not been in since July, got a cheap wheelset; but was stunned by their prices. Used to be completes were $30-70 with maybe a $100 bike if it was really clean. The cheapest was a very distressed looking Novara Strada for $150, Varsitys and Breezes for $200, a nice Schwinn with a kickback for $240 and a couple BSO for the same. I

Mr. 66

Getting to know the right ones, and being at the right place at the right time. Being able to do most everything at home can make a difference. Here is one fairly downtrodden Bottechia that was a scant more than frame at near nothing in cost.


The cranks were the only surviving original part. The sellers have asked me to not talk about prices of certain items, I tend to buy not in volume, but volume over a period of time. Most of what I get is just scraps, they got some real sharks around here. My trouble isn't flipping, it's finding to much I want to keep.

dirtman

One of the problems I've seen around my way is that most of the 'bike flippers' keep their bikes outside, for months sometimes. They don't care what it is, just so they can buy it cheap. They ask crazy prices in hopes it sells, eventually giving in and lowering the price after it get too rusty to be presentable.
There's only one or two 'bike shops' left in the area, neither one was particularly busy over the summer, one doesn't do repairs or sell real parts.
There's a few Used only shops that open during the summer months but they generally have junk or last year's rental bikes for sale.

Years ago the local police auctions were a good place to find bikes to flip, but these days all those sales get it a truck full of Walmart junk.
CL and FB are full of overpriced, rusty, Walmart bikes and a few older bikes that have been listed for the last few years.

Walmart blew out all their bikes here a few months ago on a big discount and don't appear to be restocking any. Since most of the 'real' bike shops have been
gone for years, you would think that selling a bike would be easy but bikes generally don't sell.
A neighbor down the street bought a van load of brand new Walmart grade bikes super cheap at an auction, all new in the box.
He had them listed for cheap on CL all year, I think he sold three so far, all for under $100. The last I looked, Walmart wanted $275 for a coaster brake beach cruiser that was covered in flower decals and pink paint with white orange tires.
I listed and sold one bike last year, it was a bike I had bought as new old stock, a 70's Nishiki. It was listed for 18 months with only 4 emails at $100.
The ad ran out and I let it sit. I needed the tires, saddle, and rear rack for another project so it sat on rims with no seat for a month. I listed it that way for $400 firm. It sold in a week without tires or a saddle. It sold to the same guy who emailed me almost a year before with a page long explanation how it wasn't a classic or vintage, but an 'old' bike that was only worth $25 tops. There was a 70's era Raleigh Super Course in what looked to be near mint condition in a 23" frame listed all last year. A buddy finally made a $40 offer and bought it.
I would think that a bike like that would be fairly desireable, especially being only 30-40 minutes out of the NYC or Philly.
I trash picked both a Murray and a Schwinn three speed back in Nov. Both were pretty rusty, the Murray needed a rear tube and shift cable. I fixed the cable, patched the tube, and cleaned up the rust that would clean up. The Schwinn looked a lot nicer and was missing only a rear tire and tube. I bought a tire and tube on ebay for it and went through the whole bike. I listed them for $150 ea. The following weekend I had a buyer come look at the two bikes, I gave him the choice, either one for $150. He took the lesser, and somewhat rusty Murray because he said he had a Murray as a kid. The Schwinn took months to sell, finally selling last July when I dropped the price to $60 to get rid of it. I had one person come look at the Schwinn when it was listed at $150, they showed up super early on a Sunday morning, (they were supposed to come the night before but never showed up). The guy looks the bike over, takes it for a ride and then starts asking me if it comes with a warranty. I told the guy its a used bike and I'm not a dealer. Take it or leave it. He tells me he wants the bike and then takes out a $20 bill and says its all he feels its worth. I told him sorry, but the price isn't negotiable. He got belligerent and loud telling me he's not leaving without a bike, he said he drove an hour to buy it and he wants it for $20. I came close to physically removing him from my property. The guy down the street has had similar incidents with buyers off FB and CL.
I've sold other items on CL and other items don't seem to bring out that sort of buyer.

Rage

That’s rough.
To put it into perspective, I sold a low grade copy of the Incredible Hulk 181 which features the first appearance of Wolverine to a vascular surgeon in Brooklyn for more than twice what it was worth. He inadvertently triggered a bidding war between himself, a local nyc comic shop and another rich, bored COVID shut in back at the beginning of the pandemic.
Same guy later doubled down on a collection of X-men issues 1-300. Think he got the better end of the deal on that one, tho.

Glennfordx4

I sold 35+ Bikes this past yr, the most since I started flipping in 08. I don't know how anybody can make money doing this paying retail for parts, tires alone would break the bank on most builds let alone all the other parts. I set out back in 07 to get a job at a local bike shop that had tons of NOS bikes and parts, that got my foot in the door and after they saw what I could do I was able to get my parts wholesale. The best part is buying close outs, cases of tires that were $2 a piece, tubes at $1.50, every 2 yrs I spend about $300 in parts, cables, brake pads, bearings and rim strips are bought in bulk at or below wholesale.

Since I was in my late teens I have been getting Car/Truck and motorcycle parts the same way, I hate paying retail for anything lol

Glenn

klasse

parting out a complete bike, can make a bit, save and use some parts. I don't know who's buying complete bikes, sinking money into them, then selling the complete bike for a profit.

oldlugs

I see the same thing around here, lots of crazy prices and lots of bikes not selling for those crazy prices. Walmart never sold out of bikes, but they didn't replace those that they sold either. It looks more like they just stopped selling bikes since all the bike parts were dumped in the closeout isle. Now there's soccer gear where the bike stuff was.
There are half as many bike racks and only kids bikes on display, some have been there for a long time.

There are no real bikes shops left, the last shop that did parts and repairs closed up almost 10 years ago. Bike shops began to specialize in certain types of bikes about 20 years ago, you had road bike shops, bmx shops, and those that did mostly beach cruisers and comfort type bikes.

I've watched dozen of nice looking bikes listed for months with no takers locally, both on Craigslist and Facebook. There are two kinds of ads, those who list bikes cheap and sell, and those that are trying to get eBay prices for what they have. Neither seem to sell.
I did list a few bikes that I just wanted to unload over the past year, all were well kept, ready to ride bikes and the first to sell were the department store brand bikes. The better or vintage bikes got no attention at any price. This has gotten worse over the years as various brands no longer have a dealer presence in the area. As far as I know of, there are no Trek, Raleigh, or any other shop grade brand dealers in the area. One would likely have to drive an hour or more to find a real bike shop.
This leaves the only brand recognition to fall on what's available at Walmart or other big box stores.
When I list a bike for sale, I get more emails asking if I have any cheap bikes or they name specific Walmart models they're looking for. Yet, down at Walmart, the same bikes go unsold because they don't want to pay Walmart prices.
It started to go downhill around 2008, and has gotten worse ever since. Prior to 2008, bikes sold fairly well, older models sold just fine, now the interest seems to be gone.

I walked into a bike shop in another town about an hour from here last week, they had a full floor full of bikes, mostly cruisers and kids bikes. I needed two cheap 27" tires, they didn't stock them. I just checked another shop off the list of places not worth stopping at. I had even had some doubts if the guy behind the counter even knew what 27" tires were. When I asked, he had to go to the computer to check. When I asked if they keep any tires or wheels in stock and he said 'Not really'.

Years ago this area was Schwinn dominated, when those dealers closed up, they stopped buying bikes.
A lot of kids also grew up with BMX bikes and never progressed into adult bikes. They went right from BMX bikes to driving a car.
Back in the day, you started out with a 20" bike, outgrew it and got a real bike.

Jicafold

I have flipped maybe 300 bikes by now and I have made decent money on every one. Sometimes it’s not about flipping the bike but rather the parts. Your parts may be worth more than the whole. You just have to have acquired general bicycle knowledge to know what items are worth. Example: Last week I bought an early Cannondale big tube aluminum SR 500. It didn’t have any wheels. I was far from the first person to look at this bike and previous potential buyers turned it down at $140. But it did have a Suntour Superbe Pro group on it. I’m selling off the SunTour Superbe components for way more than I paid for this bike without wheels. I will put less-expensive but quality vintage components on it and resell the bike and still make money on that as well.