Classic Japanese bike prices

[sickpup]

Just been talking to someone tonight about classic Japanese bikes and having a look around and I have to wonder is the market collapsing.

In the past I have been on the look out for an RC30 to add to my collection and they were very hard to find with silly prices £10k upwards. Today there are 7 on Ebay which is highly unusual, some around the £12k mark but a few up to £30k which is ridiculous.

I have also looked for an OW01 and never seen one for sale, there is one on Ebay for £16.5k

Theres even an R7 on Ebay at the moment at £19k

I have also heard of 2 GSXR750RK's that have been sold this year for around the £3k mark

So rare bikes seem to be available at the moment which means people are trying to get rid of them and although there are some silly high prices it would seem availability will drive prices down so is the market on it's way to collapse?

[jimbothe]

Not in the same league obviously but I had to break this

https://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b342/jgillard/mycurrentbikesmay11001-1.jpg

Because I couldn't sell it. I dropped the price to £800 at one point with no takers, not even a sniff.
Broke it in the end and I'm glad I did as it returned just over £1200 and still a few bits to list.
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[nowhere.elysium]

[jimbothe]

Just selling the absolute last bits on ebay now. I advertised it on here for ages and then ebay for 20 days. Not a bite.

Edit, why does it keep hotlinking egay when I spell it correctly?
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[fatpies]

In the end bikes are toys if somebody has a choice between mortgage payment/rent/tax and bike. They'll choose the former.

I don't think supply/demand works the same with classic bikes as its only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it as again they are toys.

[nowhere.elysium]

[Teflon-Mike]

Classic bike prices went 'silly' in the eighties, when there was no real 'classic jap' scene; and people started 'doing' classic japs, and it sort of picked back up again.
The 'collectors specials' like RC30 & OWO1, seem to go through peaks and troughs more related to the stock market than the classic bike world, same as Vincents & Velocette thruxtons.
E-bay also seems to be having a double edged effect on the whole scene. Lot more ameteur breakers and auto jumblers trying thier luck on it. At a roots level, we seem to be seeing a lot more bikes of dubiouse merit being 'saved'...
And more people seem to be looking to 'do' resto's than buy classics, to ride or hide.... which is depressing prices a bit.
It's a wiered market, basically.....
Other thing that has effected it, is that new bike sales have boomed over the last fifteen years, and right now there are a lot of very tasty older bikes out there, that are still pretty contemprary, yet, not that expensive.
Just ten years ago, there was a real shortage of decent used bikes; hence all the grey imports.
So, value of older bikes was stronger accross the board, and the more 'memorable' of them were sought out as 'classics' rather than regarded as old dogs.
And as mentioned, bikes are far more often now, pure liesure equipment; when ecconomies have to be made, saves more overhead taking the bike off the road than cancelling gym subscription, and after its been sat a year, easier to sell than a weight bench or fancy camera.
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[Blau Zedong]

Oh good. Be sure to message me when aircooled RD350's drop back below £1000 so I can restock.
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18:54:48 Rob Fzs: jews don't give away stuff for free

18:54:59 Rob Fzs: unless its their clothes/ hair/ golden teeth

[Paulington]

I think personally that some 'classics' such as the rarely produced models and the most popular ones of their day will continue to be worth something, regardless of a market crash. At the end of the day there is always someone, somewhere who is willing to pay a silly price to get the exact thing they want (or because they have more money than sense!).

[Blau Zedong]

[Paulington]

[Daimo]

A classic needs to be at least 20 years old before it starts returning a decent constent higher figure.

I.E a friend has a tiger stripped CBR900. Its spotless. Is it worth much right now? Nope, £2-3k maybe.

Give it another 5-10 years, and it'll shoot up in value.

Its the way things seem to go. Some of the bikes mentioned were never actually any good (OWO1 for example was a worse bike than the FZR).

If it was mass produced, and is only 10-15 years old, then prices will vary as there will be many still about. I.E the 916. Right now prices arn't very high. Give it another 10 years, as bikes die off, and the cleaner examples survive, the price will rocket. Even more so the more special edition it is.

[Blau Zedong]

[Daimo]

Because it was a lot more money, and no faster a bike.

[sickpup]