Who doesn’t love a cheap dirtbike?
While the vintage dirtbike market has only continued to appreciate, barn finds are still plentiful, and we’re always hearing about super deals in which some lucky buyer was able to liberate a cheap dirtbike from its cavernous prison and restored it to its former glory.
Then there are guys like my neighbor, Jim, who have a knack for finding and buying cheap dirtbike after cheap dirtbike from people who either don’t know what they have or are desperate for cash. Jim is piped into that crowd like no one I’ve ever known, and not just for dirtbikes. He buys jeeps, old cars, anything cool and mechanical that he can find. He epitomizes the “buy low, sell high” lifestyle. Just recently, he more than doubled his money on a reasonably 1996 Honda CR250R. Exploitive? I’d say no, because at the end of the day both the buyer and the seller always have the opportunity to nix the deal. Remorse can come later.
DirtBikes.com test rider Nic Garvin also has such a story about the pristine–and you can take that literally–2002 Yamaha YZ250 sitting in his garage. Garvin purchased the machine for his little brother, Troy, for a measly $300. Unlike vintage dirtbikes, the steel-framed YZed is the classic example of a cheap dirtbike that you can still ride and never fear that you’ll trash it or run out of parts. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Thank you, Yamaha for remaining faithful to the 125cc and 250cc two-stroke dirtbike crowd by being the only Japanese manufacturer to still offer models in each displacement category.
Barn finds and bargain bikes got us to wondering about just how much or how little the readers of DirtBikes.com have paid for a running dirtbike of any kind. Of course, we do mean legitimately, with a title or verified bill of sale, because nobody likes a dirtbike thief!
So answer our cheap dirtbike poll question and let us know how well you fared while making a purchase. If someone gave you a bike, well, we’d say that falls in the under $50 category.
Your Privacy Choices