Ho ho ho?

[Milkfloat]

I am smugly sitting on quite a few consumables likes cables, cassettes and chains. Mainly it is because I bought them when they were bargains. It was great when it was normal to pay 50% of the retail price on Shimano and you could find some real bargains at 70%+ off. I get the impression that supply won't change for quite a few months, certainly my LBS are having issues and have been given no new timeline. They were lamenting that for a while they could not even find 26" tubes and had to resort to patching customers tubes - I don't think that has been fully resolved yet.

 

[PaulSB]

I'm on the lookout for a new bike (my only road bike is my single-speed ex-commuter currently).

The (somewhat mercenary) view I'm taking is that a lot of the bikes that have sold out in the recent months will shortly be up for sale on eBay with only a handful of miles on the clock.

I'm sure you're right that bikes will go up for sale. However I think your timeline of "shortly' is optimistic. I'd hazard a guess many people take a good year to reach the point of deciding not to ride.

 

[TempleDancer]

But there'll be high demand from people like yourself hoping to snap up a bargain...which will drive prices up

That is true I expect, I've seen some crazy bidding wars already driving used prices up to (and sometimes beyond) retail. Hey ho, sign of the times etc.

I'm sure you're right that bikes will go up for sale. However I think your timeline of "shortly' is optimistic. I'd hazard a guess many people take a good year to reach the point of deciding not to ride.

Well, you say that, but I've already seen listings for 2020 and 2021 MY bikes come and go on eBay. Even the listing text has gone along the lines of ' bought this during lock-down, never used it' etc etc.

But yeah, still a sellers market at the moment so prices are a little high for me. I'm in no big rush, but longer rides on my single-speed are getting to be a bit of a drag when I hit a massive hill on the tail end of a long trip.