>>1991145>its way easier to buy a nice $400 bike and sell it for $700 than it is to have to service and sell four or five pieces of shit to make the same money. That's absolutely true, although I personally pay more like 100-200 and sell maybe 400-600, and it's almost entirely dependent on my ability to pounce when the right rich boomers needs room in their garage for new e-bikes. This happened to me 4 times last year. It doesn't happen regularly enough to provide any real money, you're gonna be competing with a bunch of guys who also spend too much time online looking at bikes, and it's only viable in specific places.
The practice of stripping bikes for valuable parts is also highly based on opportunity and not really something to lecture people about, although yeah, i also sometimes buy a blurry picture bike for $50 and sell one part off it for $50.
>you're not buying rad shit for yourself, you're buying stuff that can be spruced up and resold for profit. I find it much easier to sell my own bikes, my own bikes are also usually better than flips because I can develop them over time and use. And people will pay top dollar. And the only reason i can possibly think of to actually do this is that you want to have lots of cool bikes yourself and for your friends to ride.
>i dont know exactly what practices you consider unscrupulousIf you flip an old bike and don't service the hubs. It always badly needs doing.
Reselling bikes with tires that have cracking sidewalls.
Reselling bikes with gross / sticky/ dirty old grips/ bartape/ hoods/ saddle
Reselling bikes with stretched chains
Bike flippers who put value / stock in 'vintage' tires or brake pads or bartape or anything like that, when they are worth $0, and ready for upgrading.
many many other things i could go on and on
I agree you don't need to replace cables on every bike, it's not viable on many lower end bikes, I sometimes just unclamp them and work some lubricant into the housings.
