I was whimpering to my friends about the flooded garage and my lack of 2 wheeled transport when my neighbor mentioned that it was just about time for the police bike auction.
My ears perked up and my lip only sucked in and out a couple more times!
She sent me the link and alas within 7 days of my bike going missing there was an auction. SWEET!

We had recently come across some cash from a craig’s list sale that we had forgotten about – wind fall!  (ok, not really, but enough for a bike i thought!)

Hubby laughs at me and some of the numbers i come up with on what I think is a reasonable cost for something.
To me a $50 bike at an auction seemed like what it should cost. There were previously owned, possibly stolen, possibly run over with a truck…  Seemed reasonable to me.

It was my first auction, i don’t do well in barganing situations, but figured i could handle this.
We registered, got our “card” for show when bidding.
And into the bike area we went to check out the goods.
I found 4 or 5 that fit the critera – small enough for me to fit on, in decent shape – we didn’t want to spend a boat load to get it road worthy, and a brand name i had heard of!

As the auction began i was amazed. Seriosuly. It was just like you see on tv, 50, 50 50, do i hear 60, ok 60, can i get 60….

When he started with 50 as the “base” bid i was a little nervous and thought maybe hubby and i should just go…
But then they went down down down to 20 since no-one was bidding. Ok, feelign better.

There were some amazing bikes that went for 10 or 20 and some that hubby and i weren’t really impressed with and those shot up to the 300 mark.
Crazy! I figured it was just that we didn’t have the right knowledge to be talking bikes!

As i was watching some of those great bikes go for 30 i decided to jump in the ring so I had hubby star bidding on a trek. I didn’t really remeber seeing in and i can’t see far without my glasses, so it looked ok…  We eded up at the $75 dollar mark for a trek…  I figured even a low end trek would cost over 300 so we should ok.

We got that bike and put it on the car and came back for round 2. They were coming up on one of the other bikes i had marked as an I want. A mongoose.
Seems maybe we picked poorly cause not many people bidded with us and we were able to grab that puppy for the $50 mark – which was what i had thought we could.

I was a little nervouls that i had wasted some of our “wind fall” on something not usable. Hubby was excited by the whole process.

Sunday I looked around for a bike shop to check our winnings out. I ended up chosing the one that was open on sundays! Who knew bike shops were like hair dressers?

They took both bikes and checked them out. The trek i figured would be a boat load, it was ditry and the seat was a wreck…  Turns out that was the winner! A little chain lube and a new “used” seat and for $16.50 plus tax i had a rideable machine! WOOHOO! Yeah me!

The back up bike- the one that should have been the perfrect one, alas was not to be. The rear tire was more of an oval, the handle bars would a might off center nad basically it would need a $100 overhaul…  That little puppy is now sitting in the garage awaiting a time when we feel the need to fix it up and sell it on craig’s list!

All in all i was pretty pleased with ourselves! I got a brand name bike, that’s light – pretty sure i can lift it over my head, and rideable!!

Tags: biking denver