How easy/tough to sell a used m-bike?

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gobigkahuna

New Member
How easy or hard are used motorized bicycles to sell? I've never seen one locally in c-list, but have in some of the major city listings. Has anyone not been able to sell their converted m-bike?
 
Hard to say, kinda like asking how easy is it to sell a car? Is it a Corolla or a Lexus?

I see a lot of department store bikes and china kit combos go begging around here for $250/bo.
 
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The c-list ad I saw was similar. Not sure if the guy was trying to turn a quick profit, or built it and decided he didn't like it. My situation is that I haven't found the "perfect" bike to serve as a base for my "dream" build, but I did find a 700c wheeled bike for dirt cheap that I think would be an easy / cheap conversion. I could always pull the motor off it and sell just the 700c bike when I do find my "perfect" bike, but I was wondering if the bike would be easier to sell after I converted it.
 
Most people that stop & look at these bikes love them. They don't want to get off of their wallet to pay what they are really worth. I contemplated selling a few.. but after I included a NEW bike (minimum of $100.00), USED $50.00 and just the engine kit at about current price of $150.00, we're looking at without labor $250.00..now add not only the labor, and the added modifications that I do as the engine comes out of the box. Personally I'm not going to build and sell a used bike for less then $400.00. Here is a picture of a NEW bike my son and I made for a good friend. About total spent in materials were approx $300.00.

 
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Nice bike Ron. Just to be clear, I have -no- interest in selling this bike as a business nor would I expect to recoup my labor. That's all just part of the "learning" process as far as I'm concerned. I just don't want to be stuck with a white elephant that I can't later sell. I'd rather just wait for the "perfect" bike to come along and then build my "dream" m-bike.
 
Exactly right, Al.Fisherman. Folks will comment on the bikes but seem to think they're looking at something from a 1950's Popular Mechanics magazine, lol.

I've got a nice full suspension K2 mountain bike I completely overhauled and put a rack mount on it with a Honda engine The bike is not new but when it was sold for $1200. A guy stopped and asked about it. He asked me what I had for $100, lol.
 
When it gets 110 degrees plus I get hundreds of request for freebie builds.
No one wants to pay for a motorized bicycle here.


Used bicycles did at one time sell for $5.00 now they sell for $75.00 plus.
Bush did kill the economy.

There is even a guy who is trying to raffle one off for $1000.00
He has sold tickets to ten (10) people .
Consider it a hobby or a way to work off the flab.
 
For me, I sell my el-cheapo wally world crannys for about $450, can sell em in craigslist all day long. But I can watch other people fail to sell them at $200, its all about your ad, write a good ad and it will sell. Infact, I make a ton of money buying other peoples MB's that they cant sell on CL, writing my own ad and selling them within a week for 2x what I paid. Like I said, write a really good CL ad and you can sell it within a week.
 
spad4me said:
When it gets 110 degrees plus I get hundreds of request for freebie builds.
No one wants to pay for a motorized bicycle here.


Used bicycles did at one time sell for $5.00 now they sell for $75.00 plus.
Bush did kill the economy.

There is even a guy who is trying to raffle one off for $1000.00
He has sold tickets to ten (10) people .
Consider it a hobby or a way to work off the flab.
Click to expand...

I get most of my bikes on Craigslist, or freecycly.com. You'd be surprised the number of bikes sitting around someone's house, free for the asking.
 
On my old build I had an offer of 280 on the street, one of those one time only cash in hand things, but as it's my only source of transportation I had to decline. It was a free huffy bike with a fully stock 48cc Raw I got on discount for 115 bucks or so. It's possible to make money, but it takes seed money and good networking to be able to get super cheap bikes from the get go, and to get cheap motors, either buy em broke and repair em or buy in bulk and hope to sell a lot of em.
 
I guess nobody read my original post. :P I'm not trying to turn a profit, just didn't want to spend the money on it and then not be able to sell later, even if it meant taking a (small) loss. I've pretty much decided to return the bike. Although it was a great deal it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. If I'm going to get a bike, I've decided I'd rather just get what I want and plan to keep it.
 
gobigkahuna said:
How easy or hard are used motorized bicycles to sell? I've never seen one locally in c-list, but have in some of the major city listings. Has anyone not been able to sell their converted m-bike?
Click to expand...

gobigkahuna said:
I guess nobody read my original post. :P I'm not trying to turn a profit, just didn't want to spend the money on it and then not be able to sell later, even if it meant taking a (small) loss. I've pretty much decided to return the bike. Although it was a great deal it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. If I'm going to get a bike, I've decided I'd rather just get what I want and plan to keep it.
Click to expand...

No, you're getting valid answers. You never mentioned anything about upgrades and resell value down the line in your original post, you just said used MxBikes.

They're not hard to sell if you purchase your mountain bike cheap and get your motor cheap and can deliver a cheap price. It's like a car - you can drop 20K on a car the year it comes out, but don't expect to resell it 5 years later for 19.5K - to resell it for what you paid for it you're going to have to put 10K into it in upgrades that are still considered upgrades 5 years later. 2 stroke bicycles are no different ( except in that 20k would substantiate a killer build ). Now, so as to not sound like a broken record - if you would LIKE to be able to resell a couple few years down the line, you need to have a low cash investment, and a large time investment with good quality work backing that up. Start with a good frame for a cheap price, rebuild a busted up motor from the ground up, do hard mods yourself(not mail order mods, but actual cut and torch mods) and be ready to scrub it up and repaint. It's possible to get a full build for under a hundred bucks if you're willing to invest the time, and if you only bought materials - 100 bucks can go a VERY long way. After your time is put into it you can even turn a profit after you're done riding off of a 200 dollar investment.
 
@happyvalley, here's a Craigslist ad I caught:

Motorized mountain bike

Asking $500.

Then further down below, I saw an ad where he's asking for anybody who wants to dump their bikes for basically nothing so he can "get around" with one...smart!
 
MattF
LoL, good catch, I checked it and saw the ad.

On the MB he's selling, good luck, I saw two last week for the price he's asking and passed.
 
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