Police Bike Auction - Report

01-09-2005, 12:55 PM

Attended a bike auction yesterday. There were about 200 bikes up for sale
and perhaps because it was a cold and snowy day there were less than 50
buyers. Observations:

All but 2 of the bikes were department store models. Prominent names:

Supercycle
Infinity
Dunlop
Schwinn
Huffy
Murray
Free Spirit

The majority of the bikes had steel rims, drivetrains that needed a complete
replacement, stuck gearing and chains made of solid rust, seized wheel
bearings etc.

Interesting that the first and last time I attended a police auction (about
15 years ago), the dominant type of bike on the block were 27" wheel
10-speeds from the 70's bike boom and relatively unused 700c wheel bikes
from the 80's touring bike boom/bust. I saw only 3 road-style bikes for
sale. Mountain bikes appear have completely taken over the low/mid market.

Bid prices ranged from $25 to as high of $300 Canadian Pesos at the very
start. Initial prices were about 1/2 of new, as the Type-A bidders
scrabbled against each other to "win". Bid prices were directly
proportional to the number of speeds on the bike. The auctioneer pushed
hard the bikes that had 24-speed drivetrains and the useless suspension
found on the current generation of X-Mart bikes.

Non-suspended bikes were sorted and put at the end of the line, presumably
because the expectation that they would have to be thrown away.

I only saw one bike that was even slightly interesting, a
cosmetically-challenged Ritchey rigid mountain bike from around 1987. XT II
groupset in reasonably good shape. The front wheel was sitting next to the
bike. It was one of the 5 or so bikes that had quick-release wheels, and
someone had popped both quick-releases. Because of this, the bike was
likely categorized as be "broken" by the sales staff, and therefore placed
at the very end of the line with all the really really bad bikes. Bikes
that were more rust than bike, or looked like they had been used as speed
bump by a large vehicle. God knows what happened to the riders... Perhaps
this is why these bikes were at a police auction. Evidence from past
vehicular homicide cases...

Anyway, the Ritchey would likely not attract any bids. I was tempted to
spend $10 to save it from a the crusher, but it would have taken 2 hours of
waiting in a pretty depressing environment.

Total time at auction: 15 minutes.