I'm making space in my garage and finally decided to sell this vintage steel Peugeot road bike that I've had for a few years. This bike is older than me and in exceptional original-ish condition. It's small size, pearl white, crossdrilled crankset/shifters/brake levers. Awesome looking and riding bike. I first listed it on FB marketplace for $450 but had no bitesbecause its kind of an obscure brand/model/size. Typical "I know what I have" situation, haha. I then posted it on a vintage Peugeot facebook group. After a few hours I get a message from this guy in TX. He says his gf has spent the past year looking for a small racing Peugeot of similar vintage. Her grandpa had one and she wanted to have a similar bike too. She's only seen 2 bikes of this same size in that year and both were beater models/condition. The buyer is a bike guy and even works at a bike shop so we go back and forth for 2 days on a trade or cash sale.
Meanwhile, another dude from KY messages me and tells me the story of how his similar bike got stolen from him a few weeks ago and how he's wanting to replace it. He even offered a significant amount of money up front (like glen blue $) to prove he was serious. Typical sob story stuff. I looked up his facebook profile and his story actually checked out. I felt bad for that dude but told him that I'm basically going to stick with my original deal and give the first guy dibs. I told him I'd keep an eye out for him and let him know if another one pops up.
So I spend the next couple days disassembling and packing this bike. I'm messaging the buyer regularly, and he casually brought up that he passed on a similar bike locally. A solid specimen, but not as nice/original as mine. This immediately perks my ears for the other dude that got his bike stolen. I explain to my buyer that this other guy offered me a bunch of money but I turned that down just so I can keep my deal with him. He sends me pictures of the other bike he found and send it to the other guy that got his bike stolen. Then we begin scheming to extort as much money from the other buyer. I eventually connected the two guys and the guy that bought my bike offered to agent for the other dude. He just had to pay a few bucks for the time/effort to pick up, tune up, and pack up the bike. What a guy! I was just kidding about the extortion stuff and my original buyer was a good dude too. So everyone is happy and noone had to pay up the wazoo to get their collectible bike. My wallet is a little less fat but at least I feel good for keeping my end of the deal and have a good story to tell.
Ps. Shipping big rare fragile things is a pain in the ass.
Pics below.
tldr; Sold rare bike, passed on a bunch of money from another buyer who wanted to replace his stolen bike, original buyer finds the same rare bike locally. Original buyer agents for buyer #2 and replaces his bike for even less money Everyone is happy.
Topic: FB marketplace and my rare bike (Read 3445 times)
