A while ago I wanted to sell my motorcycle because I had seen this beautiful new motorcycle that I wanted to buy. The problem was I didn’t know how it would be best to sell my second hand motorcycle. I thought of selling it myself either through friends or on internet sites such as craigslist or kijiji. But one of my friends told me that many dealerships do trade-ins. So basically what you do is you take your motorcycle to the dealership and the motorcycle trader takes your motorcycle and you pay whatever difference is left between the price of the new motorcycle you want to buy and the money the dealership is willing to pay for your old motorcycle. So I thought to myself that this is definitely a much better option than having to deal with selling the motorcycle myself which may take forever and also be a huge hassle cause I have no expertise in that field.

What is a motorcycle trader looking for in a motorcycle?

But here I want to tell you about a huge mistake I made so that you don’t repeat the same mistake if you’re ever thinking of trading in your motorcycle for a new motorcycle. I thought if I upgrade my motorcycle and change some old parts and upgrade some features I could get a much better trade-in value for my motorcycle. So instead of checking first I spent quite a lot of money to boost my bikes features and condition before I go to trade it in. Unfortunately I had to learn the hard way that the trade-in value for my motorcycle hardly increased at all with all the modifications that I had made on it. But to my surprise, the trader told me that they actually prefer stock bikes when people are thinking of doing a trade-in.

Why did these modifications not significantly increase the trade-in value?

Because the modifications that I had made on my motorcycle were customized based on my own specific preferences. But that makes re-selling it to another customer all the more difficult for the trader. Because there are much less people who may possibly have the exact same preferences as me for their motorcycle. Of course the trade-in price had increased a little bit. But ultimately this is my advice to you. If you are thinking of buying a new motorcycle, a trade-in is probably the best option to hit two birds with one stone and both sell your old motorcycle and buy the new motorcycle of your choice. But don’t spend anything extra on your motorcycle before going to the dealership.