I’m having trouble selling my 2009 fireblade in the middle of summer. I’ve seen dealers advertising bikes in the same condition for between £6750 to £7500. I have mine advertised privately for £6250 and not a single call in two weeks. Dealers offered me £5500 but thats a ridiculous offer. I had no trouble 2 years ago getting rid of my R1. I traded it in for £4800 bearing in mind it was 5 years old, had high mileage and partial service history. I would have got £5250 privately i think. What is going on at the moment?
Why but a brand new bike only to sell it after 8,000 miles though? Why not keep your blade dude?
Or alternatively… Put it on gumtree, bike trader, ebay, pistonheads etc… Or advertise it Europe wide and ship it to a buyer abroad like Shiver did with his gixxer…
Put it on eBay with a 99p start and the reserve that you want. That 99p will have people interested and they’ll probably get carried away and have bidding wars.
It still won’t meet the reserve, and he’ll just end up having to pay eBay anyway for nothing.
The trouble is the Fireblade is such a common bike, there is one for every type of budget.
Why buy your 09 when the 08 is the same bike but cheaper?
Even why buy an 08 when the 06 - 07 was still such a great bike (arguably better for road use), and is again, cheaper.
These types of bikes have reached saturation point unfortunately and it has never been a better buyer’s market.
The market is also moving away from sports bikes due to a number of reasons such as riders getting older, speeding being seemingly worse than rape in the eyes of the law and the fact that these bikes work in a much narrower spectrum with less concessions than the popular dual purpose and adventure machines (which if you were selling would probably garner more interest).
Personally, I don’t think you can beat a sports bike (you can keep your GSs and the like), but that’s a minority view.
Good luck with the sale though. If I had the cash I’d have it, but I think I’m going to be keeping my 7 year old GSXR K5 1000 as nothing really has come out since to better it IMO.
In answer to your question, I think the fact that a lot of countries are broke, our economy isn’t too hot and people are not spending on what some would consider luxury items.
It’s not selling because disposable income has gone down inreal terms?
I’ve been wondering why I was finding it harder to manage on a budget recently and came to the conclusion if the cost of items were going up by say 1% then if I had to pay two bills of £100, each bill would be £1 more each = £2 more that month. So even if my income of £100 went up by 1% that is still just £1 and not the £2 I need to break even.
It hurts to be poor when prices go up, but it hurts the middle incomes too because they were used to paying more bills (more of those £1 extra per bill) than the poor (who try to go without a bill), so in real terms their income buying power has gone down further.
So less money in peoples pockets equal less chance of a sale. Like your bike.
Few people have big wads of cash so they are looking to trade what they already have, bridge the gap on finance and have the protection of some form of warranty and a nice dealer receipt when they trade in next time.
The old rule of thumb was that selling privately you needed to be 10% cheaper than the dealer and I’d guess that’s still probably true.
But even then, you are still looking for someone with the thick end of £6K in their pocket and there aren’t many in that situation right now.
i know what you mean. i thought i might get at least one phone call for my 56 plate superduke with 11k mikes for £3995- the cheapest out there. but after several weeks, nothing. Not sure how the traders expect to get much interest at £4995 for the same bike? Looks like I am keeping it.
in the past year i have sold 4 bikes and havent had problem selling at all… the ER sold within being on fleabay within a hour…
I usually see what they actually sell for
Not buy it now’s… auction prices but maybe that why i sell them so easy as put a cheap and realistic price in todays market… it a buyer market out there
