You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I know this one gets asked, but 3 months ago i had my Whyte T130CRS with green I9 wheels and Focus Jam2 6.8 stolen, and since that i've always focused on how many get stolen in the area and further afield, and it amazed me how many high end bikes get nicked with no sign of them over the years.
It just appears as if it's increasing year on year, so where is the market for this, and what is the profit, a few years ago nicking a 1k bike and selling it for 50 quid would be the type of bike thief, but nowadays it must be worth a bit more for the amount of effort and risk being put into nicking bikes, what market is driving this?!
Broken up and parts flogged on ebay gumtree etc with frames scrapped
Sold for pennies for a day's drug money
Stuffed into a container and shipped abroad with dozens of others
The two lads just outside Stirling today astride an Orange with Ohlins and a Specialized DH didn't look so much your average mtb'ers. Especially the lad on the Orange who looked about 12 yet was clearly on an XL...
I think there is a huge market for the £50 for a carbon superbike yobs.
Even bigger is the strip it down and sell parts crew.
It's the same with canoes and kayaks, only it's an even smaller market, yet somehow they all disappear...
Mine stayed local. Saw a lad cycling it past me on the street 3 months later, so got it back.
It does seem odd.. A lot get nicked and I imagine most people would be wary of a super cheap high end bike for obvious reasons.
I guess they get broken for parts a lot of the time?
That said I've seen a few chavs in Leeds City centre who are 'over biked' to put it mildly.. You can guarantee they are stolen.
I imagine that's a minority though, there was an article in Manchester evening news about 6 months back, the police busted a 'suspected stolen' bike, which then lead them to a place with about a hundred bikes in it, they mostly looked like bso bikes, so I guess they'll take what ever isn't nailed down and worry about selling/striping them down afterwards.
This is the article
Can't get links to work for some reason
Dunno what they were gonna do with them all, the Labour involved stripping them all down and reselling, and sending parts is surely uneconomical?
the Labour involved stripping them all down and reselling, and sending parts is surely uneconomical?
Far more economical if you don't pay anything for it to start with.
Anything made after stripping is profit, surely?
the Labour involved stripping them all down and reselling, and sending parts is surely uneconomical?
how many minutes does it take dismantle a bike?
Costs nothing sell for £50 is good profit. I upset a friend of someone I know a few months ago by telling them they were a cant when they offered me a mtb for exactly £50. Very obviously stolen.
Yes i think i'd agree that most are stripped and frames disposed of as that is the easiest part to trace/identify. A few mates have had bikes stolen and they have never emerged again although one mate who had a bike stolen ended up buying his back for £150 as it was the easiest/cheapest option.
Into a van, into a shipping container, to a 2nd world country where there's demand but not so much money. I saw a couple of UK brand bikes (Boardman?) in Colombia last winter, it's not likely they were legit.
I think the van then container must be the case. I had 8 stolen in the summer (6 were mine) and of mine 5 were either rare or had very distinctive features etc but there has been no sign of them at all.
Danny Hart bikes (well three of them anyway) are now doing the rounds somewhere too, probably in a similar fashion to Aaron Gwins one that went missing earlier in the year.
There was an interesting facebook post by Deviate bikes in the last week or so. One of their race bikes went missing, the frame was seemingly stumbled across by someone. Its was stripped and seemingly spray painted over a lot of it to make it less distinctive - no sign of any of the parts
Danny Hart has had his bikes stolen including his World Champs Saracen Myst. That's a pretty distinctive one off to pinch. I wonder if that will ever reappear?
EDIT - crossed posts
I often wonder the same (since I had four decent MTBs nicked in a burglary).
And I guess it's probably a bit of "all the above", but the fact that our understanding of it is all anecdotal and informed by one or two busts that get publicised is a bit weird.
Can any of our resident rozzers comment on whether it's something that's understood by law enforcement or a bit of a mystery to them too?
Yes i think i’d agree that most are stripped and frames disposed of as that is the easiest part to trace/identify. A few mates have had bikes stolen and they have never emerged again although one mate who had a bike stolen ended up buying his back for £150 as it was the easiest/cheapest option.
When I was young you could just contact the right policeman and pay to have your bike back before they were stripped down and shipped off.
For the organised/targeted thefts, (as opposed to the opportunistic/junkie theft) my theory [based on my own bitter experience] is that there are established networks to split frames and components, move them to another part of the country and sell them privately.
The frames and components then get sold on various times until eventually a year or so later an 'unsuspecting'* person pops the stolen goods on ebay ...
*I say unsuspecting as the 2nd hand 'used' mtb market really drives this black economy since many people are willing to overlook the legality of an item's 'provenance' when they are 'getting a bargain'
the 2nd hand ‘used’ mtb market really drives this black economy since many people are willing to overlook the legality of an item’s ‘provenance’ when they are ‘getting a bargain’
I suspect that many of us who buy used stuff off eBay or Pinkbike have inadvertently bought stolen goods, all that nicked stuff has to get back into the food chain somewhere.
Apologies for the dismal thought, but I would guess that if you have a criminal operation to steal bikes and strip, it's not unlikely to have illegal labour to do the dirty work of stripping and ebaying 🙁
This guy from Brussels had his bike GPS tracked. It went to Albania, so sounds like a wide market for cheap stuff.
I have thought about this too, and since I had 2 bikes stolen on the 31/10 it makes me wonder even more. The past few bikes I have sold have all gone to eastern Europe so I was thinking maybe that is a good outlet for stolen bikes. Who knows though, people rarely seem to get them recovered so there is clearly a good market for these things.
There was an interesting facebook post by Deviate bikes in the last week or so. One of their race bikes went missing, the frame was seemingly stumbled across by someone. Its was stripped and seemingly spray painted over a lot of it to make it less distinctive – no sign of any of the parts
Weirdly, they had stripped the (crap, not compatible with anything else) cranks off the gearbox, but left the (££££) gearbox attached to the frame. Then cut the frame in half. They also sprayed the only red one in existence... red. Not sure they were masterminds...
This guy from Brussels had his bike GPS tracked. It went to Albania, so sounds like a wide market for cheap stuff.
A friend had her (very high end custom built) road bike nicked, it showed up for same in a shop in Romania, for a sickeningly cheap price, no one would think it was legit.
There was a story from the States where a guy was found (quite by chance) with a garage rammed with bikes, frames, components etc. He "employed" a network of local criminals to rob people (and he was a keen rider himself, active member of a couple of local cycle clubs which he basically used to scope out stuff to nick).
The low level criminals would do the high risk stuff - breaking and entering, nicking bikes off the streets - and then by a network of contacts the bikes would find their way to this guy who had about a dozen alibis on eBay, bike forums, Craigslist etc, PO Box addresses and knew how to strip, rebuild and "chop shop" the bikes.
I sat next to a Serb lad on a flight to Belgrade who when he saw my bike magazine, started boasting about his friend in Novi Sad who makes fantastic money selling bikes stolen in the UK, which are all thrown into a 20' shipping container and sold on as a job lot. When he saw my expression he twigged and stopped talking.
ended up buying his back for £150 as it was the easiest/cheapest option.
Yup, done that before, lad who told me where it was sadly died in a car crash before I could thank him 🙁
There was a mother local to me who rode a handpainted foes. Everything on it, the bars fork lowers, all handpainted. She used to ride with her toddler on the bars too.
If past history is anything to go by a garage in Edinburgh.
But more likely just shipped to somewhere awkward to find them, easy enough to swap a vanful of bikes with your French or German mate.