2 Strokes Down Under

.........why people put such low start prices on their bikes and then use a reserve. It might save a few dollars if it doesn't sell but I think it is a pretty dumb selling strategy.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/150810427056 ... 1423.l2649

yeah it bugs me aswell,and most of them think if they dont tell you the reserve that they want you will keep bidding .i get a price in my head im willing to pay and if you know the reserve then you can bid or not, many sellers say no timewasters , but they would have less if you knew what they wanted, this is the 3rd time this bike has been listed from memory and if the reserve hasnt been lowered i doubt it will sell again,

That makes about the 5th or 6th RD ive seen that guy sell and also hepas of BSA Bantams. He must have a hell of a collection, or else he's leading peeps down the path ?? Seems to get his price in the end though.

gday doco3, he has a couple of shipping containers full of bikes , one is full of RD's , some mint and the other is BSA's, nortons etc, , i got my lc from him, very rough, looks like he is selling the lower quality RD's from what i can gather, had another container with a couple of nice vintage cars in it, the shipping container with the BSA's in had all the oil stains on the floor from where the bikes he had already asold were ,lol

I get annoyed when people set a higher starting price and then say no reserve.
Of course there was a reserve... it was whatever the starting price was.

If he has a shipping container full of RD's are they all imported from the US or something similar?

Hmm, I don't get narked about "no reserve" but take the point about an excessive difference between the start price and the reserve when there is one - frustrating process.

I've seen this white LC with the funny fairing before, seller must not be too bothered, just hanging about for whatever price he's after.
Kind of cute period fairings.

gday brg, he told me he got them on ebay from the UK and brought them over, he is english himself and would have contacts i imagine, offered to bring bikes over for us at a grand a pop , the one i got off him was a 5E0 though, i must admit some of the bikes he had were really nice.

I haven't checked recently but buying in England to sell in Oz would probably be very viable at the mo. I read that UK has 10% unemployment and 20% youth unemployment - and a deep seated recession - and a bunch of ratbag socialist Frogs and Greeks causing instability in the Eurozone .

From what I've seen in the past RD and LC's, parts and bikes, hold their price well in the UK. Maybe things have changed. Maybe I should go stiffing around for a UK tank for the LC

(And I still think a stupidly low start price and a high reserve is a stupid selling strategy - but each to their own - viva la difference . I'm not in the market for this LC but if I was I wouldn't be bidding just to wait around and be pissed off at a stupidly high reserve. )

The UK bikes are not usually 'cheap enough' even with our x-rate, but they are more plentiful and for sure you could box up and send yourself several tanks and things like RGV forks and wheels and you could make a nice profit i reckon so long as you had a good shipper. Sadly tho, its far from a no brainer at the mo

i believe he may have got them a few years ago, i have a set of upper and lower cases on the way at the moment postage was 75 pounds just for interest sake

Interesting if they were UK bikes, in a sense irrelevant as there isn't a lot of difference between an RD in one market or another except model designations and very minor details.
Australian compliance plates not being present (if that was the case) might be more tricky, not sure what the process there would be.
I came over to Oz from UK, with rather than in a container, so have been making a lot of the comparisons about which models are relatively expensive in each place over last three years.
Can't comment on the economy, but RD's are generally more pricey there and have been for a long time so probably not viable to bring them here. They had a much bigger cultural significance in UK and Europe than here I think.