Buying second hand products is very common, not only among the hipsters but also for all those who want to have a unique article that is not available in a normal shop. With bicycles it is the same situation: not a single used bicycle you buy is going to be exactly like another one.
Reasons to buy a second hand bicycle
In the following lines we give you some reasons for buying a used bike if you are thinking in buying one.
Have a unique product
Buying a second hand bike will allow you to have something unique that will be very difficult to find for another person. Many of the used bicycles on sale are real classic bicycles, with more than 30 or 40 years of history behind them. During the ’70s and ’80s and partly thanks to the good economic times of those years and the improvement of the industrial production, a lot of manufacturers started producing bicycles, introducing techniques that are still used in the present days and creating a healthy economic competitivity that promoted innovation. Many of those manufacturers don’t longer exist or they don’t produce bicycle anymore, so if you get your hands on a Jeunet, Derbi Rabasa, Torrot, Rieju, Stelvio, Carlton Flyer etc, you can be sure you will have a product 100% unique and exclusive.
Help the environment and the planet
Industrial processes behind the production of a bicycle go far beyond the assembly of all the different parts and take it to the shop. It starts with the extraction from the earth of the minerals needed for the casting of the frame and the different parts, a process that generates a lot of waste and uses massive amounts of energy. Once all the different parts have been casted and manufactured we have to transport the intermediate products from the other side of the world to the assembly plant where the bicycle will be assembled and produced. This transport is mainly by sea, using fossil fuel. When the different parts arrive to the plant the bicycle is built and when it is finished will be taken into the distributors and from there to the different shops. All that process generates a big amount of intermediate waste, uses a massive amount of energy and releases gases to the atmosphere that induce the global warming. Buying a used bicycle we avoid all that energetic waste because we only need to buy a few components to fix our bicycle.
Buy cheaper
Buying a used bicycle normally will be cheaper than buying a brand new product. The second-hand product is not subject to temporary fashions that the only thing they cause is a price rise for a product that doesn’t worth what you are paying.
Stimulate local business
There’s no big company or corporation that is devoted to selling used products. 99% of the companies working on the second-hand market are small companies. When you buy a used bike you will be helping the small local business that trades with these kind of products, to its restoration, repair and set up.
Conclusions: buy a used bike!
As we have seen in the above lines the reasons for buying second-hand products are many. The previous list is just a small sample of the benefits of buying second-hand products -and in our case- bicycles.
