Gold In Eldorado, Coal In Newcastle
GOLD IN ELDORADO, COAL IN NEWCASTLE
IGNITION
BIKE LIFE
HAVING THE RIGHT DOLLAR THE WRONG TOWN
PETER JONES
I recently traded a perfectly good 2006 Suzuki GSX-R1000 swingarm for a tire change. To sweeten the deal I tossed in the rear caliper assembly (including the caliper) and the rear axle assembly (including the axle, all spacers, axle blocks, and chain adjusters). It was a straight-up, evenSteven trade—these parts for that service. I supplied the tires. The shop that mounted the tires tossed in balancing for no extra charge.
The retail cost for these above traded items, if purchased new today, is $2,705.86, tax not included. But they were used parts, with a few thousand miles on them. So, going by the universal rule of half price for used parts,
I traded a “value” of $1,352 (keep the change) for the mounting of two tires. Am I a fool?
Actually, never mind that question because I was required to take one economics course to earn a college degree in the arts, so I’m fully qualified to explain why this was actually a fair trade. The explanation is: supply and demand, baby. I had one too many 2006 GSX-R1000 swingarms, and nobody in the entire world had a single less 2006 GSX-R1000 swingarm than they needed.
In the practical world of applied economics, something is only worth what someone else will pay for it. And, after it sells, it is only worth that amount in a quickly fading memory of the sale, until another one of equivalent description is sold. This is why the real estate industry strictly uses recent comparables for establishing value; comparables provide a temporal measure of the value of location, which means far more than the market price of lumber, shingles, and toilets.
For motorcycles, the NADA Guide is the bible of temporally fluctuating value. But don’t overrate it for doing anything more than providing “book value” because, you know, it’s just a book that provides values.
And the values it provides are, unfortunately, only for complete motorcycles, not pieces thereof.
My everyday motorcycle is a highly modified 2006 Suzuki GSX-R1000, known also as the K5, since that was its first year of a two-year run. I did the modifying mostly myself, which left me with a number of OEM parts to sell. Six years ago I sold the bodywork for around $1,500, and I sold a number of minor items for reasonable dollars. Having installed a Gregg’s Customs single-sided swingarm,
I happened to have a slightly used and totally unwanted OEM swingarm. I tried selling it also at that time. I quickly found out that no one wanted it.
Back then, checking comparables on eBay to see what the going price was for a 2006 GSX-R1000 swingarm left me dumbfounded. The “Buy It Now” price was $40. Some enterprising sellers offered them for $38.75. Worst yet, there was a swarm of GSX-R1000 swingarms at these prices. I was an owner of a rare, expensive, functional, like-new piece of high-quality engineering...that nobody wanted. And so my swingarm acquired another six years of dust.
What I’d learned here was that wheels and bodywork are hot items because of how sportbikes are used, but no one ever needs a swingarm. If a rider does need a new swingarm, that rider needs a new motorcycle because something very bad has happened. And that’s that.
Finally, I lucked out by recently discovering that Fast Frank, who specializes in making quick-change kits for motorcycles, uses swingarms to develop and display his products. He didn’t have a I<5 version of a swingarm. He did, however, have a tire-changing machine. Supply and demand, baby.
And that, Virginia, is why this story has a happy ending.
But does anyone need a 2006 GSXR1000 OEM shock absorber? Hello? ETMM
/ BY THE NUMBERS
62 MY RARELY ADEQUATE PASSING GRADE IN ECONOMICS 101
850 THE NUMBER OF JORDS M SUPPOOEU TO WR~TE FOR TH~5 COLUMN BUT ALWAYS EXCEED
40 THE AMOUNT OF DOLLARS WANT FOR THE GSX-R SHOCI<~ 080.
