Charles, The bikes at the auctions listed are ones that I have seen up before with no bidders, and likely this will be the case again. Even with the generally high prices that things sell for here, there is a point over the top where nobody wants to go. There was a time where the sky was the limit for Japanese buyers, when the Beverly Hills Hotel, along with impressionist paintings at any price, were gobbled up in a booty acquisition frenzy, bikes too. The economy is much changed now, and spending reservations are greatly in effect. Many people have the money to spend, but are not willing to do so on a wide scale, one of the reasons why the situation never improves. Something different from the US that I have noticed about this culture, and this also applies to expensive bike auctions and shops selling classic bikes, along with automobile showrooms, is that when the consumer is not willing to spend and items aren't moving, the dealers rarely lower their prices. Although it seems odd, I see bikes being auctioned for the tenth time at the same price with no takers. I'm not really sure what the logic is behind it, and it's not just a no pressure to sell thing. The auto dealers certainly aren't smiling. It could be that sellers don't want to let the public know that they have bargaining power, something rooted in old Japanese society? In the years that I have been watching both the US and Japanese bike auctions, only on rare occasion have I seen an item picked up in the US being offered over here. It leads me to believe that there is not much purchasing for later resell profit, and in general, that the market for classic bike goods although somewhat aggressive, is quite small. Most of the heavy hitters are playing at ebay, and don't mess around at the relatively small interest and comparitively limited items availability Japanese auctions, unless they have absolutely no English language capability. That is my impression anyway.
Dennis Young Hotaka, Japan
> Dennis posted these interesting bikes:
>
> High starting prices on these, nobody is bidding.
>
> http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/
>
> http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/
>
> http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/
>
> *********
>
> I am very curious to know if those bikes actually *sell* for
> anything close to those prices in Japan. Do they? Dennis?
> Does anyone know? That rose-colored Cinelli is nice, but at
> over 3K for the bike, maybe a bit too nice. And I'm
> extremely curious to know if that Colnago Arabesque would
> really sell for 5K.
>
> I recently sold a different sort of collectable to a
> japanese buyer, through an intermediary I had done other
> business with..the buyer speaks no english, and is not a net
> expert, so the intermediary, his friend, helped him make the
> purchase. I imagine that for every one Japanese collector
> on ebay, there might be 5 or 10 people who buy on the
> secondary market, in-country, at even higher prices.
>
> I imagine some of those collectors do a fair bit of
> re-selling, for a nice premium. 'course, we've all done
> that, from time to time..
>
> Charles Andrews
> SoCal