WTF: Ebay Oddities

Browsing ebay – as you do, though we don’t advise it after a few drinks, you never know what might turn up over the following week – we first of all spotted this:

Which were still getting our heads round when it SOLD for £670. Yes, it’s sold. Who bought it? Was it you? And we were still getting our heads round the bike and the fact that it sold when the same seller started advertising this:

Which has completely boggled us. Let’s have a closer look at THOSE BARS:

If for some reason you have the arms of Mr Tickle and would like to buy this, again you are TOO LATE. Yes, it has sold, for £127. Really.

We really don’t know what’s going on here. Is this seller playing some kind of prank on the new-to-cycling hipster fraternity? Is it an art project, heading for next year’s Turner prize? Is it someone with a home made wind tunnel and a Kray supercomputer in the shed who has discovered that This Is The Future, and we’ll all be riding bikes like this in a few years? We have no idea, but we’d love to know. We’re also really looking forward to whatever is coming next.

It’s not just this eBay seller that is filling us with wonder. There’s also this:

Which, the march of progress and modernity aside, is a relatively normal bike. However, the listing description includes this:

We can only begin to imagine what this means. Did the buyer turn up and bring with them the cool chill of death and a faint odour of brimstone? Did they try and pay in blood? Or did they insist on carrying out the entire transaction in Klingon? And how is this buyer being dealt with? Is there a freezer somewhere we should avoid opening? Meat pies at a motorway truck stop that are unusually salty? Or are the arbiters at PayPal currently trying to use Babelfish to translate the Klingon letters of dispute?

Some of us may think we have too many bikes in the shed. Some of us may have partners that think we have too many bikes in the shed. But there are people out there who really do have too many bikes – they don’t even fit in a shed. This n+1 extreme seller shows commendable stacking ability:

However this seller is more of a ‘when stacking goes wrong’ example. Apparently there are 100 bikes here. Please send help, this is disturbing us somewhat:

Finally, there are ‘the tides of progress’ job lots, like this:

What will be the future component suddenly found to exist in vast surplus numbers, we wonder? And which will be the component so overlooked is suddenly sought after by retrobike enthusiasts? Long stems maybe?

Let us give thanks to the hoarders and bike modifiers for the joy that is eBay. Do let us know if you’ve spotted anything good!

All pictures were taken from the eBay listings as linked to at the time of writing.

Hannah Dobson

Managing Editor

I came to Singletrack having decided there must be more to life than meetings. I like all bikes, but especially unusual ones. More than bikes, I like what bikes do. I think that they link people and places; that cycling creates a connection between us and our environment; bikes create communities; deliver freedom; bring joy; and improve fitness. They're environmentally friendly and create friendly environments. I try to write about all these things in the hope that others might discover the joy of bikes too.

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