Yesterday afternoon I was just lazing around the house, disgruntled about the rain, when I get a phone call from my son. He asks me if I've checked my email and if so, what I think of a couple of bikes he found on Craigslist that he's interested in. I hadn't been in my mail account, so I went over to the 'puter and opened it up and checked out his links. We discussed the bikes for a while and looked at a few others. We boiled it down to a pair of B12s - a '97 & '98. He contacted the owners and both would be home, so I headed over to his place and together we went to go check them out.
The first on the agenda, because it was the closest, was the '98. This bike was advertised as "dropped once" - but looked OK in the tiny Craiglist pics. It was black and had 18K on the clock. A call to the seller revealed this bike was being sold as part of an estate sale. They were asking $2800 for it. This thing looked more like it has been thrown down the road hard. The tank had dents on both sides, the windscreen was broken (only the left half was there), the bars were bent, the chrome buckets on the clocks held on with duct tape, the idiot light panel was broken on the left end, the Kerker bolt-on can was seriously ground on the lower end near the flange.
While we chatted with the widow while we were looking at the bike we learned she'd just sold their '81 CBX SuperSport - for only $1000! She said it was a little dirty and needed a new master cylinder, but ran fine.
I couldn't believe she sold a CBX for a grand, and I bet the guy that bought it thought so too. She said he didn't waste any time giving her the cash.
Apparently, she had no idea what to ask for the B12, so had asked the CBX buyer what he thought and that's where she came up with her price. Maybe he was trying to help her out by setting a high price to make up for his stealing the CBX - but a too-high price isn't gonna help that wreck move out of her garage.
We said our good-byes and headed out to check out the blue '97. Talk about your opposites. This one has about the same mileage as my '01 (42K) and was almost spotless - only a couple of scratches on the front fender. It has a full Yosh system and Factory-Pro Stage I jet kit, Corbin seat w/backrest, fresh rear tire, Chiltons manual, receipts & records for everything, plus all the stock parts. The seller is the second owner and selling because he bought cruisers for him and his wife. He was asking $2650 and my son got him to agree to let it go for $2400. We'll be heading back over this afternoon with the cash to pick it up.
. . . and take pics for proof.