I Missed the Vancouver Police Auction
At a festive North Van party on Saturday, I determined that 1) a fun way to entertain yourself and a 2-year-old is to feed the kid a large block of maple fudge while his parents aren’t looking, and 2) that I had just missed the Vancouver Police Auction, which is held several times a year.
Attending the police auction is an excellent way to end up riding a stolen bike, you know, for street cred, without having to actually risk jail time. Ken, the fellow who’d gone, said that the auction featured many, many bikes of poor quality but some really nice ones too. But the auction isn’t on any fixed schedule that I can find, even on the Able Auctions site — they apparently run it.
This hard-to-find Web page shows some of the merchandise that was available this year, including watches, guitars, tools, sporting gear, landscaping equipment, a puma electric wheel chair (for shame, crook!) and of course, boom boxes.
Because anyone who steals boom boxes is not a clever cat burglar or international jewelry thief avoiding the local gendarmes, I think.
Anyway, if you’ve gone to the auction, I’d love to know if it’s worth attending next time. Maybe I’ll go to the Bailiff Seized Boat Auction on the 23th….
I have never met a serious bikie who thought the police bike auctions were even the least bit worthwhile.
The problem is that the bidding is wacky. Utterly awful department-store bikes get bid up near their new cost, and anything even halfway decent (rare indeed) is bid up to at least market value.
You might get a rare exception, usually some hidden gem that has a cheaply fixed problem. Missing a rear wheel, perhaps. But we’re talking about finding, typically, something like an early steel Ritchey mountain bike frame, an object worth maybe $200 in excellent condition on a very good day; not somebody’s misplaced $2000 year-old super bicycle.
I’ve been to the police auctions too and the people that bid are suckers as they end up overbidding for crap that costs a lot cheaper brand new. That applies to everything from bikes to accordians.