Re: Kona Caldera 1997 - unicorn scenes
I think this is the final bit of the story-telling for now. How did this unicorn get into my garage?
Like many, I have searches set up in ebay - in the US, UK, German and other versions. It's broad and you need to spend a bit of time sifting through the crud. On the US site, this ad popped up:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/97-Kona-Caldera ... 1916659481
I couldn't believe my eyes. Instinctively I thought it was a respray and had incorrect decals applied. But even on first view, you could see it was genuine: right colour, right forks, wheels, decal placement, etc. The pic's weren't the best quality:
I saw the ad at about 10:00 GMT. The bike was being sold by this store
http://pedalpowerct.com/
So I had to wait until around 17:00 before I could ring them up. I couldn't purchase it immediately through the BIN function because the store wouldn't ship it outside the US. So I wanted to move very quickly on it. An email conversation wouldn't do.
I spoke with the store, explained that I wanted to buy it immediately and to agree the best way to get it to the UK: via a friend in the US or directly shipped to me. They needed to get the person who managed their ebay store to call me back so they took all my details.
I didn't get a call that evening, so after a patchy nights sleep, I rang them again the next day in the early evening. This time I spoke with the right person and tried not to scare him off with my eagerness to close the deal. In all fairness he and the store were great and we sorted out the payment, including shipping to my mate in Brooklyn. I paid what you saw on the ad; they didn't try and up the price.
Only after payment was made, did I gently explain why a random bloke from the UK was so keen to purchase a 18 year old bike. They were just pleased it was going to a good home. I asked if they knew anything about how it came to them. It was a simple trade in...I couldn't resist a comment along the lines of "well I'm glad it's coming to me, but that was a mistake by the owner!"
Since I was buying it from a bike store, they knew exactly how to pack it. You may have seen the horror story of my Kilauea last year, so even though they re-assured me it would be packed properly, the next 10 days were a nervous wait. When my pal took a few snaps before the next stage of it's journey from Brooklyn to the UK, and shared them with me, only then could I breath a little easier.
Once again, I used Fed-ex. It's a little pricier than the others but it's dead easy to organise and so far the service has been excellent.
It's hard to put a value on a bike like this. All I know is that the sum I paid and the sum I had in my head for what I'd be willing to pay including shipping, was much, much less. I'm very happy :mrgreen:
