Afcyclestx

It’s 1:45 a.m. in San Antonio and I just bought a bike! Why so late you may ask? Well, it is a
Felt Q620 mountain bike... 3×8. Hydraulic brakes. 17.5in frame. 26in tires. Disc brakes front and rear. Rockshox fork... That’s why!!

All that for $140!!!!
I was tired af and then I saw the post and messaged him and he said “Sure! Come get!!”

so I gott out of bed and went and bought a bike at 1 o’clock in the morning...

... and lived to tell about it!

Kapusta

Pics or it didn’t happen.

Afcyclestx

let’s see if I got my 10 posts in yet...

Afcyclestx

That’s the post that I got the bike from
https://offerup.co/QSKxOIALAbb

and next I’ll go take a pic of the bike

Afcyclestx

Rage

Okay, the first thing you have to do is admit you have a problem.
There’s no one judging you here. You’re among friends...

Afcyclestx

Loaded up 2 trucks full and went to an Art Walk and setup shop for the day.

Afcyclestx

My friend was supposed to pick up this Trek 4300 For 55 bucks. His ride couldn’t make it so he texted me and told me I can get it because he couldn’t lol
a Trek for $55 bucks... um hello. Yes! I couldn’t pass it up...

here’s post.
https://offerup.co/cyb2H3QOAbb

Ive got friends in low places...

It does need a little TLC but not too much...

Rage

All kidding aside, good for you, Bobby.
I’m over here liquidating my sports card and comic book collection for cash. It’s actually going okay, as I have made some money selling off key books and cards. Managed to clear five grand on a low-grade Hulk 181 in which Wolverine makes his first appearance.
My Spider-Man collection is also flying out the door. Sold off my collection of Shaquille O’Neal rookie cards too. All six hundred. Problem is, once the key books and cards are gone, I’m gonna need a whole new way to put food on the table and I’m stuck for ideas...

Afcyclestx

It’s taken hard work and hours and hours sitting in front of my phone. It’s not always easy. In fact, it’s rarely easy. I get ripped off sometimes. I got a counterfeit 100 a couple of weeks ago and my truck got broken into and they took about 800 in parts. My wife left me and took my kids because I am trying to make this bike thing happen too hard. Now all I have is my bikes. But I’m trying to start a business. I was a Head Chef of a nice as restaurant. Great food and reviews... and Covid hit. Before Covid I didn’t ride bikes. I had a passion when I was a kid and stumbled onto this bike thing. I was actually flipping guitars and modifying amps and not making cash. Just went into hustle mode because I have 3 kids and my wife. I got a bike because it reminded me of being a kid. I fixed it up, a midschool Redline BMX, and enjoyed it so much I got another. Only this time it was a brand new $500 bike this trophy wife was selling to clear out her garage. 50 bucks. I snagged it up. I was the first person to respond to her post. It had been up like 2 minutes and I was in her area. I got it and it felt good. It was my come up bike. I traded it for 2 bikes and cash on top. So now I had 3 bikes. Wife started trippin but I felt like I had to keep flipping money because I lost me job and it was all I could do. Restaurants were closed. All of them. What could I do. Now, my genius way of having money to put food on the table has left me alone. My wife got tired of all the bikes and the kids were knocking into handlebars and pedals. I was going to pick up bikes at 1 in the morning and she thought I was cheating. Jeez. This Covid **** really turned my world upside down. My wife took my kids and went to Tennessee and lives with her mom. My narcissistic personality disorder and the bikes were too much. I have too many bikes and I keep getting more. Who could pass up a $55 Trek? Did I need it? No, probably not. Will it sit there for a couple of weeks. Probably. Is that the last bike I buy? Hell no! I’m trying to get a shop and have a business that my family can come back to. Only thing is I think it’s too late. I’ve invested so much time and money I have to keep going. We all have it in us to figure out what we need to do. I’m always tying to find a way to make money with money. Always. For me, I’d rather buy a $55 bike and make a quick $200 profit than a $55 bag of coke and make $200. But when all is said and done, I know that when I feel real depressed and down and out from being alone.... a real cool bike is in the other room. Waiting for me.... and all I have to do is take that sucker out and hit the streets... and when I’m riding everything seems ok.

Rage

Oh man, Bobby, I am so sorry to hear about the wife and kids.
And you’re just trying to put food on the table too. I commiserate. I’m in pretty much the same bind.
I’ve got seventy five long boxes of comics in the house and I’m actively cataloging and selling off duplicates of keys. Comic books and cards are everywhere and She who controls my life is a little bewildered by how our home has become a comic book and sports card clearinghouse. But she’s putting up with it in good grace so far.
I feel bad and all, but I’m just trying to make a buck.
Any chance you can do something like rent a storage space for the bikes so you can get them out of the house? I’m actually thinking of renting a cheap office or storage space somewhere so I can go through the entirety of my collection in peace and quiet. I’m finding many copies of books I didn’t even know I had. Must have bought them, added them to the collection and forgot about them. Just found multiple copies of Amazing Spider-Man issues 361, 362 and 363. All high grade. One set is going up on eBay. Two other sets will be going up for sale on consignment in local NYC shops.
Sucks that there are boxes of stuff everywhere but nice that I’m prolly gonna do very well on the sales of just those books. I just sold off a bunch of early Spider-Man keys that feature the first appearances of the Sinister Six. Never could have done that if I didn’t have space to look through thousands and thousands of worthless comics lol.
You might similarly benefit from such an arrangement. You can work unmolested and the wife and kids can walk around the house without knocking over bikes.
Whatever you decide to do, I hope everything works out with you guys.
Maybe swoop down on her with a bouquet of roses and put together a fancy steak dinner for her and the kids?
That’d thaw the ice over here pretty quickly, anyways. She LOVES when I cook for her and her family.

Rage

I also got over twenty five bikes in the basement. Tell your wife!
Maybe she’ll cut you some slack...

Afcyclestx

lol Thanks. She was the victim of my narcissistic personality. Before Covid I worked, and I’m not exaggerating, 72 hours a week for a year straight. Covid struck and then Quarantine and then I was home all day all night. We found out that we didn’t get along. Then it became toxic. The bike thing was just icing on the cake. She wanted me to stop messing with bikes. I would be up all night working on them and the during the day going out to make deals. She told me to stop and I said no. I couldn’t understand why I HAD to stop. I was trying to build up a name for myself. I was starting to get respect from guys that were doing this before Covid. To me, she didn’t understand. I still feel that way. She figured out with a setting on my phone that I was on Offerup about 8 hours a day. My thinking was that even tho I invest hours into finding bikes it was just something that isn’t part of the whole scheme of things.... and I guess it is. But I kept on. Now she lives 18 hours away and I can be on Offerup as much as I want. Alone. But I still love bikes and if it wasn’t for bikes I might have gone off the deep end. I still feel like she could have dealt with me being on the phone a lot.

That’s cool that you have all those comics. It’s impressive. I used to have a ton of old Star Wars toys. I wish I would have kept them. I ended up selling them at a comic book store for less than half of what I thought they were worth. My sister collected cards. Like a lot. I always thought it was weird. But now I think it was cool. She started doing it when she was like 8 yers old. The only thing I was collecting when I was that age was dirty clothes.

Today I don’t feel like dealing with people or drive around but I can’t make money that way. I have only been on Offerup about 30 minutes total today and it’s 5 pm over here. I guess I need to put on some bike riding vids on YouTube and get pumped up. I might ride this Felt I got yesterday and try to convince myself that I don’t need to convert it into single speed. It’s partly cloudy and 79 degrees outside. Tomorrow might be cold. Maybe in the low 70’s lol.

AeroGut

Just make sure you put as much energy into selling as you are into buying, and there's a good chance you can make a few bucks. And with a lot of experience fixing stuff up, you can also make some money doing repairs for people, especially now that the pro bike shops are really backed up from covid.

Afcyclestx

you are right about that. My website has a bike repair price chart. I need to find a way to push that. Yesterday I was in Walmart and I went to the bike aisle and they were stocked up. People aren’t going to go underground as much. You’re right about bike shops being backed up. Thanks. I know what I need to focus on today. Was feeling lazy but now I’m motivated. Think I’m gonna finally go on that bike ride now. Cheers!

Rage

A bike ride’s the way to go if you want to clear your head. Has always worked for me. The blushing bride and I are gonna meet up with some people from the bike club tonight and cruise around Manhattan for a couple hours. Looking forward to that.

The comic books and sports cards are the legacy of being a weird kid. My parents actually let me spend two thousand dollars on a copy of Amazing Fantasy 15 when I was twelve or thirteen. I made the money buying and selling John Byrne comics at comic book shows and conventions.
And I became obsessed with finding those Shaquille O’Neal rookie cards in high school and college lol. Was buying boxes of cards. Scouting for them at shows. Yeesh, I was/am weird haha!
My craziness extended to buying up failing comic shops in the late nineties and early 2000s. I spent a lotta weekends peddling books at comic shows around the country. Lotta riding too. Was so much fun.
Everything kinda dropped off when I hit my thirties. Work. Life. You know. But I have a ridiculous collection of books and cards now that I am unemployed. And, thankfully, they’re actually selling. Was surprised as heck but it seems there is an uptick in back issue comic sales or something going on.
Whatever the case, I’m liquidating books rapidly.
But I’m going to hit a point very soon when I run out of the good stuff and then I’m in trouble lol. And I’ll be left with like sixty five boxes of worthless comics and cards cluttering the house too. I guess I could put them back into storage at my parents’ but they seem so appreciative I moved them outta there...

With any luck, things will get better soon and then we can all go back to the way things were before the pandemic.

katsup

Kudos for fighting it out to get the good deals post covid. I use to do it as a hobby pre covid, but I rarely try now since there is so much more competition. A lot of the ones I flipped this year were free or came in trade. I'd always service and list them as soon as possible to get inventory low. I'd focus on that, especially now a days, as the current demand may drop in an instant and you'd be stuck with slow moving inventory.

Good luck with your endeavor and family. Bike flipping does keep you busy.

Afcyclestx

This is a pic of the Walmart bike aisle taken the other day.

I keep hustlin’ and trying to figure out how to keep my nose above water as I go. I remember looking down this aisle 4 months ago and it was empty. That made me so happy. For one, there weren’t any bull**** crappy Walmart bikes in circulation and second, that meant people were going keep buying from the underground. But honestly, that picture, of all those crappy bikes lined up on racks in an aisle at Walmart, has me worried. I knew it was going to happen.... It makes me feel like I need a game plan. I need to shift my mentality and focus on a different approach. Something I’ve been meaning to do and maybe NOW is the time. I need to sell more online. I need to find a way to push bike repair. Bike shops are backed up with people needing bike repairs. The turnaround is like 2 weeks minimum. That’s a long time to have to wait for your bike to get fixed. It’s also going to cost an arm and a leg. I have a website I traded a bike for. It’s pretty sweet. On it I have a list of all bike repair prices. I’ve been so caught up in my personal life and I’m getting distracted. I wake up without my family and I’m alone and I get depressed and I lay there for hours. Theres so much I need to be doing. I don’t know where to start. I have a couple of places that let me set up shop for the day. I call it a Bikeshop PopUp. I advertise for it on Marketplace and Offerup and I take all my bikes there and tell people to stop by and they can test ride my bikes and I have a lot of parts for sale. I need to setup another one and focus on mentioning bike repair. Ive had an excuse to slow down, but not a good enough reason to stop. The last one I did I came home tired and after all the loading and unloading I was ready for bed. I left a footlocker that I keep a lot of my carbon fiber parts in inside my truck in the backseat. I also had a set of expensive dish fixie rims back there. I guess I forgot to lock my truck or something because I was so tired. But yeah, I woke up in a great mood and was going to go on a bike ride and when I walked outside I looked at my truck and the door was wide open. All my stuff was gone. About 800 bucks in nice bike parts. Bullhorn and drop handle bars, carbon fiber stem and seatposts. Track fixie saddles and that nice Origin 8 dish 700c rimset. For a guy like me trying to make it selling bikes and bike parts, it was like taking 2 steps back. It took having a lot of bikes to get all those nice parts. I’m still losing sleep from it. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and look out the window in the living room to see if I spot someone looking into my truck. I don’t trust anyone on the block now. Everyone is a suspect to me. I think someone saw me loading up all my bikes and parts for my PopUp. Like I’ve been targeted. I changed the locks to my doors in my house. I’m paranoid now. It’s been very discouraging and sometimes I want to throw in the towel. Only problem is that I’m a Chef by trade and the market sucks. Not only that but Covid is getting bad again. People are acting like things aren’t as bad as they are. I work part time, 2 days a week, and I see people walking into the restaurant with their masks on, all in groups, and they sit down shoulder to shoulder and take them off. I feel like It’s no wonder why things are they way they are. ****s going to hit the fan again. Being a Chef during these times just really sucks. People can’t pay me what I’m worth because they just aren’t making a lot of money and I understand that. I’m not going to take 10 bucks an hour and spend all my time at a place wearing a mask for a crappy paycheck. I am too old for this and I feel like bikes are my escape plan for getting out of the restaurant industry. What really sucks is that I was fine before Covid hit. My checks were good. I was running things and doing a good job. I had my family. Everything was getting paid. Working 72 hours a week was tough but I couldn’t complain. And then.... the restaurant shut down. We had a meeting and I told everyone that it was just for a couple of weeks. So we cleaned up and made use of all the food we had on hand. I took a bunch of stuff home and went into Quarantine with my family. Weeks went by and my relationship with my wife was going downhill. We weren’t use to being around each other so much. I’m a narcissist and she’s very headstrong and we’re both stubborn. The bikes made everything worse. I was using my stimulus money on bikes and she was starting to complain. I saw bikes as money in the bank and an investment for the future. I couldn’t just keep spending that money until it disappeared. Then what were we going to do? I had mouths to feed. Bills to pay. I had to make money with the money I had....

But anyways, I’m ranting and going on and I’m pretty sure you guys have already heard it. I know I’m not the only one. Covid hit everyone hard. I think everything happens for a reason. I feel like this is my shot at starting my own business. I want to start doing private dinners at my house. I also have a food website that came with my trade deal. It was an 900 dollar bike I traded for 2 websites. Cool thing is that I got the bike I traded the sites for 300 bucks. So now I have these 2 very professional websites and they are sitting there because I’m too depressed and because my motivation is almost out of steam. Mercari is a pretty cool app and I have a friend that sells his BMX stuff there. eBay is something I need to look into. Bike repairs and pushing my website need to be priority. I use my PopUps as motivation to get my bikes in good working condition to sell. Only thing with that is that I have so many bikes and they all need a little something done to them. I spend a lot of time doing my own repairs and the days are just flying by. I spend my free time working on bikes and not on marketing. I just need to go to a coffee shop with my laptop and brainstorm and not leave til I have a solid game plan because Walmart is stocked up and winter is right around the corner. I feel like through writing this post I’m waking up a little. Depression is hard to shake off but I need to just splash some cold water on my face. Today at 3:00 I’m going to trade my State Megalith fat tire bike for about an 800 dollar 21” BMX build. What’s cool is that I got the fat tire bike for 200 bucks. It’s msrp is about 800 bucks and it has a Thomson seatpost and Ritchey handlebars. It’s cool and all but not really my thing. I bought it knowing it would be great to barter with. The guy I’m trading with is someone I met on Offerup. He’s also a Chef and the guy that sells a lot on Mercari. I’m going to talk to him about how he ships his stuff he sells. It seems like such a pain in the ass to ship but it’s something I need to start getting used to. If I can use this opportunity to get my motivation back and a new game plan going I’ll be good. I think I’m going to go on a bike ride now. One last cruise to the coffeehouse on the Megalith before he’s gone. I hope everyone is doing fine out there and sorry if my story was too long. I didn’t mean to go this far with this post, but like I said, I believe everything happens for a reason. For my website I thought of these cool words for bike riders to live by. Now that I think of it, I need to start living it myself. There are subtle underlying messages behind it too. it’s about us all coming together but waking up too. About riding your bike not softly and shredding. It’s also about working hard and grinding on but also with BMX you can grind on your bike. It might not look like much, I don’t know, but after I finally wrote it to where it looked good to my eyes, to where it FELT good, I sat back in my chair, kicked my feet up on the desk, put me hands behind my head and smiled. Here it is. Have a good day y’all.

Rise up
Ride hard.
Grind on...

AF Cycles Tx.

katsup

My suggestion is to start by servicing the bikes and listing them. I preferred Craigslist over the others. My theory is that the bikes aren't going to sell if no one knows what you have.

The slow moving bikes could be listed on eBay. Be careful not to burn yourself out.

Rage

Just wondering about the market there. Only ever passed through San Antonio and never had the chance to take in the cycling scene. Hot market/cool market? In between?

prj71

I would have stayed in bed and kept sleeping over buying an 11 year old outdated bike.

prj71

This definitely has the makings of a country song. Sell this story to someone in Nashville. Maybe you can make some big bucks.

Afcyclestx

I used to use CL alot but only use it when i'm looking for a job but ebay is something i'm looking into. Matter of fact today that is my main focus.

Afcyclestx

Yeah, that's not the way I see things. It wasn't for my personal use. I don't like gears. I knew someone would like it and I found someone to trade me about $500 in tools for it. Inside the Milwaukee bag is an Oscillating Multi-Tool Kit... I bought the bike for $140...
How does that saying go? You snooze you loose? Lol.

Afcyclestx

Funny thing is that you're right! Even funnier is that my wife and kids are in Nashville right now. I lived there about 6 years... my wife grew up there.