Hi all! Congratulations to everyone on the start of the motorcycle season! If only the weather in the Central and Northwestern regions of our vast region did not let us down. Today I want to share my experience of buying a motorcycle at an auction in Japan.
First things first. The motorcycle I bought was not my first motorcycle, but it was the first motorcycle from Japan. At the end of '16 I decided that I wanted a motorcycle from Japan. Because I had a relatively modest budget, I chose two models: the Honda Shadow 400 and the Yamaha Drag Star 400. Don’t throw stones at me, but for me both of these motorcycles are equally good, each with its own features, pros and cons, but both are the best for their money. I started my purchasing journey by looking for an office that would help me with my purchase. I decided on one company. At the end of February, I wrote a letter to the post office asking for help in buying a motorcycle. Vlad (auction manager) quickly guided me through the prices and explained the terms of purchase. At that time, my budget was 170 thousand rubles, but I wanted to buy a motorbike for 150 thousand.
After I made the down payment, we began the search process. Well, we, I showed extreme initiative and began to look for myself. What did I understand about Japanese auctions?
There are several auction houses in Japan. The largest BDS, the largest auction takes place every Wednesday in Kanto City. On Wednesday, two to three times more motorcycles are sold than on all other days at all other auctions combined. Where can you see auction items? I looked on this company's website in the auctions section. Everything is very simple, select the desired model, set the filters (mileage, cost, age, etc.) and go ahead. I would like to note right away that the mileage of all motorcycles is real. In Japan, mileage is not calculated because... this is a criminal offense. My friends asked me if it was scary for me to take a pig in a poke. Let me explain, this is not a pig in a poke. The BDS auction is a serious company. Local mechanics thoroughly inspect every motorcycle we sell and rate major components. Grades are given on a 10-point system. How to read, 5th motorcycle is in excellent condition, 4th good may require replacement of consumables, 3rd motorcycle requires minor repairs with replacement of spare parts. In addition, BDS mechanics write their comments on the main units. For example: oil leaking, rust in the tank, non-original shock absorbers, etc... All this data is entered into the auction list and is publicly available.
Here is an example sheet. Honda Shadow Auction List Having such information, all that remains is to look through the lists of the models you like and carefully study the auction sheets.
Having chosen several motorcycles for myself, I sent the lot numbers to Vlad, but unfortunately, in my first auction, not a single bid was successful; the motorcycles were sold above my budget. The second auction also did not bring results. I was very upset, because after an unsuccessful auction everything started all over again, again viewing lists and auction sheets. Often, there were no good motorcycles for my money. The third and fourth auction also did not bring me joy. I was ready to give up and even began to think about buying a motorcycle from a motorcycle wash.
Next Tuesday I send the desired lots to Vlad. I wake up on Wednesday morning and see a letter with the following content: “Hello! I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart! I'm just shocked! This is really your day. The price is a gift! 136,000 rub. + 3,000 rub. The mood has been lifted since the morning)))"
What can I say, I didn’t walk all that day, I was flying with happiness. I have Roach again. Yes, I'm a Sapkowski fan 
To summarize, I was pleased with the work of this company.
This concludes the first part of my story. Next time I will talk about the nuances and timing of motorcycle delivery from Japan.
Thank you for reading to the end!
Motorcycles from Japanese auctions
To buy a Japanese motorcycle at auction, you can visit the central office of our company in Vladivostok. If you do not have this opportunity, or you live in another city, then you can purchase a motorcycle from Japan remotely using the website and email. Let's look at the main stages of choosing and purchasing custom motorcycle from Japan
Before purchasing a motorcycle at an auction in Japan: 1. The client selects a custom motorcycle from Japan on the Japan-Trade website in two sections: BDS, I-MOTO motorcycle auctions, and Yahoo auction. In BDS and I-MOTO auctions, photographs and an auction sheet are provided for each Japanese motorcycle, which makes it possible to obtain comprehensive information about the condition of the motorcycle. The link to the Japanese motorcycle (or lot number, auction name and auction date) is sent by email or via the request form. 2. We check the custom motorcycle you have chosen and answer any questions the client has. If the client is satisfied with the motorcycle and all delivery conditions, we proceed to concluding a contract. All motorcycles have starting prices, so it is impossible to know for sure how much the selected option will be sold for. You can get information about the price of such motorcycles from our manager, or yourself, using sales statistics and a calculator. 3. You enter into an agency agreement with for the supply of a motorcycle from Japan. To do this, the client sends his passport details, registration and cell phone number by email. We include them along with the motorcycle data in the contract and send a copy by email. The original is sent by Russian Post. The client studies the contract and makes the first payment (prepayment). 4. The client makes an advance payment of 30,000 rubles (1st payment). Subsequently, if the motorcycle is not purchased for any reason, the paid amount is returned in full to the client. The advance payment (as well as the subsequent 2nd and 3rd payments in case of purchasing a motorcycle) is transferred to our bank details in Vladivostok, or to representatives of Japan-Trade in Japan. Payment can also be made at the company's office in cash. 5. After making an advance payment, you place a bid on your chosen motorcycle from Japan, and if you lose the auction, choose other suitable options. Bids are sent to [email protected] the day before the auction starts. Bids are sent in the following format: motorcycle name, auction name, lot number, your maximum bid in yen at the auction, or in rubles (in Vladivostok, with all expenses). After purchasing a motorcycle at an auction in Japan: 1. We inform you that the motorcycle has been purchased. The client is sent photographs and is also informed of the purchase price of a Japanese motorcycle at auction. Subsequently, you can check it yourself in sales statistics. 2. You pay the costs for the motorcycle on the Japanese side and freight (2nd payment). As a rule, this is about 70% of the final cost of the motorcycle in Vladivostok (minus an advance payment of 30,000 rubles) 3. The motorcycle is delivered from the auction to the port of departure. Photo recording and paperwork for export are carried out. Upon completion of all necessary procedures, the motorcycle is sent to the port of Vladivostok by the nearest ship.
4. Upon arrival of the motorcycle in Vladivostok, payment is made (3rd payment). Typically, this is about 30% of the final cost of the motorcycle. — customs duty — brokerage services — storage in a customs warehouse — agency services. After completing customs clearance in Vladivostok: 5. The motorcycle and its documents (PTS) are issued to the client, checked for compliance with the description and photographs, and the acceptance certificate is signed. As a rule, from the moment you purchase a motorcycle in Japan until it arrives in Vladivostok, it takes 20-30 days + 3 days for customs clearance. For buyers from the regions, motorcycles are sent across Russia by rail from Vladivostok. In this case, the documents are sent to the client by express mail. The average cost of sending a motorcycle across Russia by rail is 10,000 rubles. 6. You receive the motorcycle in your city at the parking lot of the railway dispatcher company. By this time, all the necessary documents will already be in your hands. The client only needs to register the motorcycle. You can find out about the arrival date of the motorcycle in advance from our manager, or by calling the sender's company office in your city. The Japan-Trade manager informs you about the progress of your order, starting from the moment you purchase the motorcycle at auction until you receive it in your city. Informs the approximate date of arrival at the port of Vladivostok and completion of customs clearance. When sending to the region, the client is informed of the date of dispatch and arrival of the motorcycle. Communication with the manager is carried out by email or by phone. After receiving the motorcycle, please write your review and evaluate the work done by our company. The opinion of each client about the quality of the services provided is important to us.
How does bidding work at a motorcycle auction in Japan?
Most motorcycles are sold through online auctions.
This is real-time bidding, through step-by-step increases in bids by participants (from the starting price to the maximum value that they are willing to offer to the owner)
The owner of a motorcycle in Japan always informs the auction in advance of the minimum price (urikiri) for which he is willing to sell his horse.
This bar is always hidden for all auction participants!
For one motorcycle, bidding lasts only 30 – 60 seconds.
Therefore, you need to immediately clearly identify for yourself the maximum that you have for purchase, since during the bidding process there will be no time for meetings.
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What is the starting price for?
Each motorcycle is assigned a starting price (in yen) by the auction system, its only function is that you cannot bid below the starting price, the bid must be at least 10,000 yen higher than the starting price.
Example: if the owner wants to sell for a minimum of 1,000,000 yen, then there is no point in starting to sell the item from scratch, so they set a starting price of 600,000 yen (for example) to reduce the bidding time and immediately weed out participants with insufficient purchasing budget.
How can I find out what the motorcycle will sell for?
It is almost impossible to predict the outcome of bidding at a motorcycle auction, because owners in Japan communicate the desired price for selling a motorcycle to the auction at the stage of registration in the system. This information is not known in advance to bidders. And no one can know how many more people will bid for a given lot.
You can easily determine the price (range) of the auction based on the lots sold based on similar parameters (year, mileage, ratings).
To do this, use our service
Or service selection according to budget:
I decided to buy a specific lot and decided on the price:
Having decided on the maximum level of your budget, you make a request to the manager, who will participate in the auction on your behalf. Then you just wait for the result.
On the day of the auction, the manager begins to bargain for you in real time, by increasing the bid step by step (the auction step is 2,000 yen).
Example:
Lot with a starting price of 520,000 yen - You are ready to buy up to 1,000,000 yen.
Starting from a starting price of 520,000 yen, the manager will increase the bid by 2,000 yen, and will expect an increase from rivals at the auction by 2,000 yen, only after which we again have the right to increase the bid by 2,000 yen. So the manager will trade up to 1,000,000 yen (your limit)
Let us remind you that bidding for a lot lasts up to 50 seconds. Therefore, rates are rising very rapidly.
Attention : none of the auction participants can repeatedly increase the bid by more than 2000 yen until an opponent raises it.
Therefore, the client is always sure that the amount at the auction increases precisely because of the increase by the participants, and not due to the manager’s own increase in value.
Trading outcome options:
1) Not sold to us
If during the bidding the manager made his last button press at the 1,000,000 yen mark, and the bidding continues further, we release this motorcycle.
In this case, someone else will buy it, whose bid was higher.
2) Sold to us
The owner informed the auction in advance that he was ready to give the lot for a minimum of 800,000 yen ( urikiri - a hidden price for everyone ), and the last click of our manager after this mark, the motorcycle will be given to you for 802,000 yen.
But this is only if none of the competitors raised the rate further.
3) NOT sold to anyone
Yes, this happens too)
The owner informed the auction in advance that he was ready to sell the lot for at least 800,000 yen ( urikiri - a hidden price for everyone )
Bidding started at 520,000 yen and stopped at 680,000 yen, in which case the lot will not be sold ( Not Sold ).
Since no one overcame the hidden price set by the owner of the motorcycle.
In this case, with a high degree of probability, the lot will be re-listed at the next auction.
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Hello everyone, I decided to share my experience of buying a motorcycle at a Japanese auction.
The first thing I started with and recommend to everyone was studying at a motorcycle school and opening category A. As banal as it may sound, until you try to ride different motorcycles yourself, you won’t understand exactly what you need. I honestly tried to read hundreds of pages of holywar text on the Internet, but it really didn’t bring me any help. Perhaps someone will find it useful to know that “the seat height of this motorcycle is 5 cm higher than this one, and the clip-ons are moved 3 cm forward,” but these stories are of little use to a beginner. There is only one way out - go to a motorcycle club or school, sit on motorcycles, ask the owners for a ride, feel the weight, fit, and overall comfort. It was during such a fitting that I refused to buy a chopper. I liked everything in the pictures. And the image of a stern biker and shiny chrome and everything was beautiful until I tried on the Yamaha Drag Star. Great bike, but not mine. Sports - definitely not. I'm going in. I caught myself thinking that I was flying 180 during the day along a busy city street and realized that for me such rides would quickly and quite predictably end. A pitbike or a small enduro is a cool motorcycle, it’s a great device to drive, jump, ride, but as a second motorcycle, but not the main one. The classics remain. I won’t go through all the models; I chose the Honda CB400ss. I know that it’s scabies, I know that it’s lightweight and doesn’t go faster than 130, but I just liked it and I’m comfortable with it. In the end, the first motorcycle is not forever. I bought it, drove it for a year, sold it, bought another one - now all this is quite possible.
I've decided on the motorcycle, now I need to decide where to store it. It is advisable to do this before buying a motorcycle. You won’t be able to store it in front of the house, it’s expensive in the parking lot and somehow I don’t really trust them at all - they take money and are not responsible for anything. The garage remains. Based on advertisements, I found a garage next to the house. I bought it for 70 rubles, and in a month with a friend I changed the roof and floor, threw out all the trash and generally brought it into decent condition.
This is how it was:
This is how it became:
Now you can start purchasing. The budget for the motorcycle was set at around 150 thousand rubles. with little tolerance. The first stage is advertisements on auto.ru, avito and other bulletin boards. They sell a lot of things, but sometimes there are very funny stories. For example, the Honda VRX 400 is supposedly from 2001, although Honda officially stopped producing them in 1999; or cb400 with a mileage of 20,000, although according to the frame number it was sold three years ago in Japan with a mileage of under 30,000. In short, you can search through advertisements, but this is not the path for a beginner. It is a very big risk to buy something twisted, broken, etc.
The second option is resellers who themselves transport motorcycles from Japan. There are a dime a dozen of such offices, they all “will bring everything in the best possible way,” they all have almost the same song: “If you buy it yourself, you’ll buy junk, and if we sell it, then all the best.” OK. Let's try. I found an office on a recommendation; they sent me to the sempermoto website to look at lots at Japanese auctions. The procedure is as follows: you look at the lots yourself, estimate the age/condition of the motorcycle, if you can roughly fit the money, write to resellers, they evaluate the bike and make a bid or don’t and say that the motorcycle is bad. In general, I lost a month on this matter. Auctions went on, motorcycles were sold, and we were all waiting for a miracle. As I understand it, a miracle is when resellers buy a motorcycle at an auction for cheap, and give it to you for normal money. Perhaps if I had bought a motorbike for 500 thousand, everything would have worked out, but with my 150 there was definitely nothing to do in this scheme.
Third option. During the month of confusion with outbids, I studied auctions far and wide. I understood the rating system, what is sold when and how. Believe me, it’s not difficult, you just need to want it. As a result, I contacted sempermoto directly. Psychologically, there were two difficult moments: sending a stranger in Vladivostok 30 thousand in advance payment and, then, making a currency transfer to a Japanese bank using an auction invoice. By the way, the scheme of working with sempermoto is this: prepayment, you place bets on a motorcycle and at some point you win it
I was lucky at the fourth auction; at JBA I won a 2005 Honda CB400ss with a little over 2,000 km on it, rating 4, which, according to the auction criteria, indicates a very decent condition of the motorcycle. Apparently, in Japan the motorcycle had two owners, so I will be the third
This is what the auction sheet looks like. Several photos from different angles and a lot of incomprehensible words in Japanese. It's actually not that complicated. Read the instructions for the auction sheets, there are plenty of them on the Internet, everything is simple and clear.
In terms of timing, it takes about two to three weeks for delivery from Japan to Vladivostok and customs clearance, then three weeks for delivery to St. Petersburg. To avoid troubles and dashed hopes, I would advise focusing on a period of two months. By the way, this is why it’s better to make a purchase out of season, otherwise you’ll definitely be exhausted by the wait.
And so, one winter evening a call from a transport company, and.....
To be honest, I was expecting something like a huge parcel - a box, but here it is such a lightweight design. Together with the driver, we easily unloaded her from the gazelle. By the way, it was at this moment that I was glad that I had thought in advance where to store the motorcycle. You can find yourself in an unpleasant situation when they unload a 200 kg parcel at your entrance and you are left alone with it.
We continue to unpack the New Year's gift
Now almost everything is open, the last boards are ready and we roll the motorcycle into the garage.
The battery blinked goodbye with the turn signals and was discharged to zero, there was literally a glass of gasoline at the very bottom of the tank, the oil level was below the minimum level on the dipstick. Take all these points into account if you plan to pick up the motorcycle under your own power.
While I was inspecting the motorcycle and removing the battery, I discovered the original set of tools. It's a small thing, but nice.
Then there will be maintenance, registration, opening of the season, but this is a completely different story. Actually, what is the moral? Miracles probably don’t happen, but if you put in a little effort, you can buy a normal motorcycle for normal money. Just don’t rush to the first offer you come across and everything will work out.
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Calculation of the price of a motorcycle using the example of a 2009 HONDA VFR800, JBA auction:
Auction sheet:
Motorcycle with good ratings. On the JBA scale, the rating is 4BBBB, this is similar to the ratings on the BDS auction scale - 5 overall and 5 for all nodes. There are cosmetic scratches, etc. Technically it is in very good condition. Passed regular maintenance. Notes: The levers are worn, there are small scratches on the body, there is a little rust on the wheels, there are stickers. The engine is a little noisy, the steering stops are slightly bent, there is rust on the frame (medium), the boot on the fork is cracked, there is a little rust on the metal parts, see diagram, the front fender is a little cracked. 2 Keys. Options: ABS and panniers. It will be necessary to do maintenance after arriving in the Russian Federation.
The dollar/ruble exchange rate is 63.5. Trading date: 11/08/2016
Costs in Japan (actual purchase price at auction, auction fee, delivery throughout Japan, warehouse, customs clearance, loading, freight) - RUB 365,000. Costs in the Russian Federation (customs payment, unloading, broker work, delivery to a transport company in Vladivostok, lathing and shipping Vladivostok - Moscow, sending documents, BCTS certificate, commission) - 120,000 rubles. Total costs: 485,000 rub.
Payment procedure and payment. Purchase scheme.
1. Payment of a deposit - 30,000 rubles (included in the total cost of the motorcycle)
2. Selection of a motorcycle at auction, evaluation of a specific motorcycle and bid, calculation of its final price with all expenses.
3. Bidding. Buying a motorcycle at auction.
4. After bidding, payment of costs in Japan is made. This amount is about 2/3 of the total cost of the motorcycle.
5. After the motorcycle arrives in Russia and goes through customs clearance, the costs in Russia are paid minus the deposit.
