At Bike Church Santa Cruz this is a periodic source of tension. Some of what I'll say is policy at the bike church and some of it is my own opinion of the situation-- I'll try to differentiate between the two.
Various folks pick through our parts on a daily basis. Some folks are "cherry picking" the best stuff, some folks have a fleet of bikes that they are maintaining, and probably a few are profiteering off of us. Most, in my opinion, are just kinda obsessed with bikes and nice parts and are effectively just enjoying the hunt. Which isn't so different than most of us folks running the shops, right?
I think the question to the list is about folks who fix up bikes in our shops or on their own for resale. At the bike church we've discussed this extensively. The prevailing opinion in our collective is that it is so intensely difficult to make a buck with such activities that it isn't something that we should worry too much about. It's certainly better for such folks to get bikes and parts and culture from us than bikes and parts and culture from the black market / bike thieves. And it makes some old bikes functional while providing under-the-table income for a few folks.
Where this behavior becomes problematic, in my opinion, is when individuals are either profiteering off of our shops by re-selling the best parts (eBay) or simply hoarding the best parts; in either case it removes the most useful components from circulation and prevents bikes from being getting back on the road. As Troy mentioned re: BICAS, this is especially problematic when it concerns antique or rare parts that fetch ridiculous prices on eBay. It helps a lot to have a separate, but publicly accessible area to display such parts.
When we suspect such activity at the bike church the policy is to dramatically ramp up the price charged for those components. This is at the mechanic's discretion, as are almost all of our policies, and we have a guiding principle of punishing the behavior and not the individual patron, but it amounts to a levy on cherry-picking. It isn't a perfect solution, by any means, but I think it helps and it avoids the creation of a lot of new rules and such, which can be so difficult to enforce, let alone communicate to patrons.
Glad to see that the Thinktank is thriving. I haven't checked in for a while.
in cahoots,
kyle
We call those who fish through our drawers and get all the good parts "pickers" and running out of wheels in a size we need or stems or seatposts has been the main reason we don't allow them to buy from us (at least from our bins) we keep some of the nicer stuff in a small display case we have at the counter and have a fixed price on it. these are generally available for anyone to buy. I price them by looking on Ebay at completed auctions, this gives a better indicator of the market value of vintage or no longer produced items. I half the average ebay price. If someone in the shop is working on a bike that needs this part it will then get steeply discounted again. I've tried shaming pickers in the past and it seems to do nothing to them.
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