An investment?

We have our dreams. Our limitations. Our common sense. And usually no buckets of money… And then you get into a pleasant conversation with someone of the kind that used to be called a ‘bird of paradise’. In the UK, such a person might be called ‘slightly eccentric’. A friendly person, from the looks of his appearance in his late fifties and probably single. According to my sweetheart, you can recognise such men in terms of relationship status by a certain sloppiness and the vague suggestion of a limited capacity for self-cleaning. He was a motorbike enthusiast, he said. He had seventeen motorbikes, he said. New motorbikes.

A long story short and clear: The man had 17 motorcycles. Let's say from the eighties to the nineties. And how new were they? They had never been ridden. In fact, they were all still in the crates/cardboard outer boxes in which they had come from the factory at the time. That packaging was also important in the story. To prevent the texts on the crates, stickers and labels from fading due to UV light, the entire collection was stored in the dark in a specially built hall. The UV radiation in sunlight breaks down the pigment particles in the ink. The amount of UV radiation is of course seasonal and naturally differs from year to year. Not all colours fade at the same rate. Yellow and red fade first, then blue and black. Keeping them in the dark is the best remedy to prevent that phenomenon. When entering the electronically triple-secured hall – through a lock – dim lights came on everywhere.

My conversation partner explained that he had started his collection from the inheritance of his father, an apparently famous psychologist who would undoubtedly have had an opinion about the approach. The approach, because if it had been an investment, then the premium of buying the plot and building the hall would have brought a minimization of the profit in the long term. It seemed to me…

I was wrong. My new acquaintance was making arguments in a Trump-worthy manner that showed he was doing very well in terms of investment. All that was needed was a humble nod… I was daydreaming about the future value of a 250 Honda CB 1986 RS. A neat Kawasaki GTR1000? You can get that for less than €1.000. A very nice Yamaha GTS1000 will currently not fetch much more than €3.000. Would there ever be any interest in virgin examples of those machines?

I know of an early BMW R80 G/S with 99.985 km on the clock. That is the mileage with which BMW delivered the machines so that the dealer could make a test drive before he could give the machine to the customer with 0 km on the clock. The boxer had never had petrol in the tank. That unique piece turned out not to be interesting. After all, it was already out of the packaging! And, even worse, the tires had already simply rolled over the ground outside the factory.

All in all, I was allowed to view 17 virginally sealed boxes in a dimly lit hall. Heard the stories that went with them. The owner of the boxes was proud and happy. I was mainly surprised. And surprise and curiosity are precisely the corks on which I float. But I had had a great day. And cardboard boxes? I understand that too. I use those kinds of large pieces of cardboard as winter bottom insulation for my garage floor. Because tinkering with cold feet is a disaster. But it is spring now. And my now weathered cardboard floor covering has already ended up in the blue bin.

By the way, we found the Norton in the picture a while ago at Gallery Aaldering. That copy came from the collection of the Flemish Norton dealer Podevyn, and that was also such a character!