Blinky-FSO
Serious Thumper
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Three Eyes Are Better Than Two
Posts: 528
Kentucky
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Saturated? Probably so. Three reasons come to mind.
The number of low mileage bikes listed seems disproportional to bikes that reflect the mileage that you would expect for the model year. As an example, the 2007 C50 I bought in March of last year had a whopping 2,200 miles on the clock, less than 400 miles a year. There seem to be a lot of guys that have never ridden that buy a new bike then scare themselves or figure out it is hot, cold, or wet out there and then just park it in the garage until they get the nerve to tell the misses and try to sell it. How many times have you read in the ad that the seller "no longer has any time to ride"? A rider always has the time.
Then there are the riders that need to have a new one every few years. Lots of low mileage trade-ins for the shiny vanity bikes.
But maybe the main reason is the way we view bikes in the US. Now there are a fair number of riders on this forum and out in the real world that rack up enough miles to wear out the bike by commuting on their rides. However, most of us use them for recreation and would have a hard time racking up enough miles to use up the bike before we got tired of it and migrated to another bike. Again, as a personal example. I bought my first bike, a used 2007 S40 in February 2012. It had 3,200 miles on it when I bought it and 9,200 when I traded it in on a used 2007 C50 13 months later in March 2013. The C50 had 2,200 on it when I bought it and 7,500 on it now. I fully anticipate holding on to it for the 2014 riding season but have already convinced myself I need a better tour bike with ABS and alloy wheels when I retire and hit the road full time in 2016. So, there will probably be one more C50 for sale with less than 20,000 miles in the spring of 2016.
Sorry to be so longwinded but as an old sales/marketing/advertising guy, it is an interesting topic.
Good hunting
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