Frank’s last word

Buying, selling, then buying what you’ve just sold. I’ll never understand

Why do we always make the same mistakes? Do we never learn? Life can be perplexing... Two years ago, almost exactly, I sold a motorcycle. Nothing unusual there, you might suggest, except that I sold it because I had replaced it with a similar motorcycle, a modern model from the same manufacturer which was better in almost every way. As you would indeed hope, progress being what it is.

I was entirely sensible about this, not least because I have made the same mistake before, many times, selling a bike only to miss it something rotten and then waste hours poring over the ads looking for another one. This is increasingly difficult as no one is building the old, obsolete, out of production bikes (add your own definition of ‘classic’ here) that we’ve enjoyed and then sold, lured, perhaps, by the shininess of the new. Who knows? In this case I was lured by a more relaxed riding position and far better brakes, Also by fashion, embarrassingly enough.

I asked a high price for the great outgoing bike, too, confidently expecting that no one would be fool enough to part with the requisite wonga and I’d be stuck with the old ruin. Not a bit of it. It sold straight away. This is always a deeply scary experience – it cannot happen that way without the asking price being far too low. I didn’t even need the money. And there is plenty of space in the big shed I like to call The Shed. I sold it because I had somehow convinced myself that it made no sense to own more than one touring machine from the same stable. What rot! I am – I remind myself – the fool who owns not one but two Norton lightweight twins. How and indeed why can this be? I have no answer.

Maybe I was short of money? Well, although I always am, as is everyone else, it wasn’t that. Money wasn’t particularly tight, and I am at that time of life when delaying self-gratification (in a motorcycle sense) is pointless, because with every year that passes every opportunity for monster self-indulgence should be firmly grasped with both hands.

Other views are of course available, but I do not subscribe to them. If 2020, a truly bizarre year, has achieved nothing else, it has reminded me that we are all – including me – mortal.

There truly is little point in putting off until tomorrow what a chap can enjoy today. Which sounds entirely selfish, but so what?

So, gentle reader, two years ago I sold a motorcycle. In itself that is not entirely unusual. I’ve sold lots of motorcycles. What is less usual is that the motorcycle I’d just sold was a replacement for an almost identical motorcycle – same marque, same model – that I’d sold maybe 15 years previously, this time because I was desperate short of cash. And having sold that bike, I spent the next decade vaguely searching for another one, just like the other one. And I found it, bought it, rode it, loved it, and… sold it again.

You can guess what I’m going to say next: I spent the intervening years looking for a replacement. I would suggest that this was a case of déjà vu, but it’s more a fine example of stupidity.

You can guess what I’m going to say next, too. Having wasted two years prowling the ads looking for the third example of a totally favourite motorcycle so I could buy it, ride it and most certainly never ever sell it … I’ve finally stumbled across one while looking for something completely different. It’s great. In excellent order and not butchered nor bodged to the point where its gentle return to stock (I do this; no apologies) would break the bank, and it’s even the same colour as the first of its breed to lighten my darkness. And of course it’s asking for a couple of grand (say that quickly, it feels better) more than I sold the last one for.

I will love it. I will ride it far and wide and at every opportunity. Every one of my increasingly geriatric and opinionated two-wheeled chums will think that I’m insane to ride a bike which is old fashioned and older than its replacement, so entertaining abuse sessions are inevitable. I don’t care. I shall grasp this opportunity. Unless…

Unless another bike I should never have sold, a 1965 G80 Matchless in a fetching shade of psychotic blue, say, should appear for sale again after many years. And it just has. The very same bike, not one just like it. That bike may even be advertised in this very issue of CBG.I cannot justify both, not even in my least selfless moments. Plainly I need help. Can anyone offer advice?

is the editor of RealClassic magazine, the latest in a long series of publications that began in 1982 when he was bullied into producing The Jampot, the previously excellent magazine of the AJS & Matchless OC. He was also founding editor of Classic Bike Guide and has returned as a columnist as a penance. Or something. He has a mysterious obsession with riding obscure and elderly motorcycles, which he does very slowly…