Looking for a decent cheap "post office bike" - reality check?

Sparks

Hi folks,
I'm looking to get a fairly cheap (100-150) bike for cycling about the city in. We're talking about from Smithfield to Portabello kind of distances. All I wanted was a cheap bike with a front basket and mudguards, the kind of bike your mother learnt to cycle on in the 1960s. Nothing flash, no 257-speed racers, no pneumatic-suspension graphite-framed mountain bikes, just a plain, ordinary, boring bike, the kind noone would even bother to look twice at, let alone steal.

Turns out that's apparently like trying to find hen's teeth...

Anyway, I just thought I'd ask - am I completely unlikely to find such an animal in that price range? And if not, where should I be looking?


(new/second-hand/99-th hand, doesn't matter to me so long as it's in reasonable condition and the brakes work...)

milod

You could ask a retired post man...

Seriously though, try www.gumtree.ie, and www.buyandsell.ie. Gumtree have a subscribe feature too, so you get emailed when a new ad appears.

oobydooby

well you could try the Garda auction in Kevin Street if it's just a cheap bike you want for the city... or try the free trading section on dublin corpo site www.dublinwaste.ie; however I have a really cool image in my head of somebody actually cycling a vintage postman's bike and this could be hard to find! Good luck though

By the way - there's no such thing as a bike that no thief would want to look at in Dublin in my experience

ruprect

oobydooby wrote:

By the way - there's no such thing as a bike that no thief would want to look at in Dublin in my experience

It would strongly deter a thief if there is no real market to sell to, the OP is saying they are like hen's teeth so obviously there is little market for them.

In another thread I was talking about painting bikes pink, I imagine most scumbags are homophobic to some degree, and there would be little market for a pink bike. Most cyclists are male, think I read 90% somewhere, so right there you have cut out a huge amount, and I imagine most women would be less likely to deal with scumbags, and would want a "female bike".

If you got a good but basic looking hybrid and lashed a basket on it would be a lot less enticing. I have hand painted my 2 bikes all over, just sloshed paint on all the components being careful not to do any mechanical damage with the paint. Everybody comments on how awful it looks, to remove the paint would take several hours if not a full day, so even if somebody knew the true value it is still too much hassle when it might only take take 10-20mins longer to cut through a better lock on similar bike.

Nobody would buy my bikes as they are, they are so distinctive that if some scumbag offered you them you would be worried that the true owner might spot you, and could beat you to a pulp.

blorg

Sounds like just about any hybrid should do you, no? Gumtree and Buyandsell (adverts.ie also) as milod suggests.

DavyD_83

oobydooby wrote:

well you could try the Garda auction in Kevin Street if it's just a cheap bike you want for the city...

AFAIK the bike auction last month is the last one they're having. Apparently now the gards are going to record frame numbers and store them in garda stations where they were found to await collection. Don't really see how this is different to what used to happen (at least was supposed to, i think) but there ye go. Thats what the mustachioed man in kevin st said anyway.