Originally Posted by
PeteHski
I think a lot of this comes down to your gut feeling about the seller and specific circumstances of the sale.
How expensive is the bike? Does the seller look like someone who would own this kind of bike? Is the asking price a bit too good to be true? How and where was the bike advertised for sale? Does the seller have a purchase receipt? Is there a shop service history?
I think it's fairly easy to get a good feeling for whether or not a bike for sale is likely to be stolen.
In your case, I presume the circumstances of the sale didn't raise any alarm bells?
Correct, the circumstances all made sense and the seller seemed trustworthy to me so I had no suspicions at the time and it honestly didn't cross my mind.
BUT - gut feelings and first impressions can be majorly influenced (in either direction) by biases both implicit and explicit.
Easy to take the simple precautionary step of checking against a registry before finalizing the sale, something I'll remember to do next time around. The value is somewhat minimal since most bikes are unregistered, but it certainly would have helped in OP's situation.