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OK, so the new MBR arrived today and there is an article about the Police in Hampshire breaking up a bike stealing/breaking ring that sold almost a £250,000 worth of parts through ebay, parts taken off bikes stolen.
Clearly, tracing components is easier than bikes with frame numbers etc. A pair of fox forks looks pretty much like any other fox fork?
So the motive for stealing bikes, perhaps more so for organised gangs, appears for the parts to sell.
The article does include tips on securing your bike and trying to recvover it but how about parts.
Realistically, what can be done about the parts selling?
I will hold my hands up here having bought a few bits of ebay, including a second hand but mint complete rear wheel that seemed a good buy at the time. It was regular auction not a buy-it-now so it wasn't an obvious cheap "too good to be true so it musn't be" price.
Should we be looking to interrogate the seller a bit before buying or is that assuming they are guilty?
There are a few sellers on ebay that I have come across selling parts and they do appear to be in business selling second hand parts. Should they be avoided?
I have also bought parts off STW and the general assumption I make is that a like minded person would be legit. I will keep that view until somethng goes wrong or I hear to the contrary but I am a bit more mindfull about ebay now.
There do appear to be a few ebay shops specialising in second hand parts. Personally I avoid them.
I don't see how they would be viable without "aquiring their stock" extremely cheaply.
So why would a typical MTBer sell their used kit to a second hand reseller for a knockdown price, rather than just directly sell it on themselves?
It stinks, and needs police investigation, but too often "they're only pushbikes".
The legit second hand parts sellers will just buy complete bikes and brake them for parts. There's certainly profit to be made doing that.
If you buy the right bikes that have plenty of top spec kit on them you can break them and make some profit. I can't see the shop style bike breakers getting involved in this. Its the folks who sell stuff with no clue what they've got you want to be wary of.
blimey, this seems to be getting to be quite prolific now.
Is it normal to ask for frame numbers, purchase history etc when buying 2nd hand.
The chap off here with the orange off gumtree seems to be homing in on the seller so that might pan out OK.
Do you ever just ask an ebay seller for a frame number just to spook them/check the legitimacy of the sale?
I quite often break up my bikes when I'm selling them, that way I get to keep the parts I need & sell off the stuff I don't, parts & cash for the new build, only once have I ever been asked for a serial number & that was after the sale, being a honest seller I'd have no problem supplying numbers, I ask for numbers when buying from people I don't know, silence or excuses means my money goes elsewhere. The thinking is that:
A, I'd have some sort of evidence of where I've bought it from, if there were a problem in the future
B, a dodgy seller wouldn't be quite as forthcoming with the information (just my opinion)
you're all thinking into this too much! Cheap parts? Lovely Jubbly!
Before you start, I've had 3 bikes nicked worth over 9 grand in total...
parts with serial numbers.
Owners who write down such serial numbers and log them somewhere like Immobilise
Ebay and the like forcing sellers to show serial numbers and people checking them against the database.
No or tampered with serial number = likelihood it's stolen.
Adding more serial numbers probably doesn't help since no bugger writes them down and even if they do they tend not to get recovered anyway. Datatag's a good idea in principle but we change parts too often i think.
Adding more serial numbers probably doesn't help since no bugger writes them down
exactly.
There is a bike register company that you log your frame number with. Cannot remember name off top of my head but they also let you check a frame number if your buying and alert you if it's stolen. You would need all paries to agree to use one place to register because there is just no policing it with all these company's that do it at the moment. So one central register that all police bike companies and all off us use is the only way I can see to trace anything and see if it's stolen.
I only once bought something for a price that really did seem just too good to be true. But to make sure they weren't nicked I arranged to meet the bloke at his house. Sunday morning, invited in, met the family, got a cuppa, showed me his bikes including the donor for the wheels I bought. Price explained and I knew where he was if they turned out to be nicked (although who would recognise a factory wheelset on the trails).
I quite often (once or twice a year) buy a full bike from ebay and split the parts for profit (made around £600-700 on the last two).
If your worried that parts on ebay are stolen - just dont buy them....
typically they are quite easy to spot as the seller has very little or no information about the parts / bike.
It it also possible that people are attending police/drugs/customs/bailiff auctions and buying up job lots of bikes to split down. At the last one in Salford there was lots of up to 15 bikes that from what I can gather, 1 person was buying for exactly this. There was also a Speciaized Pitch that I was told went for a "pretty nice price".