{"id":30761,"date":"2021-11-26T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/?p=30761"},"modified":"2026-09-24T13:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T04:45:29","slug":"thoughts-motorcycle-bubble-price-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/20211126\/blogs\/thoughts\/thoughts-motorcycle-bubble-price-surge","title":{"rendered":"[Thoughts] A Price Surge Just Like the Bubble Era! How Long Will the Motorcycle Bubble Last?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A price surge unimaginable ten years ago. Fifteen years back, if you asked a thousand people, all thousand would say such a surge could never happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what’s happening right now? <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Looking at motorcycle license holder statistics by category, <\/a> the numbers are flat or showing a slight declining trend.

Without comparing to past motorcycle boom era holder numbers, it’s hard to say for sure, but the denominator doesn’t seem to have grown dramatically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be even better if we could figure out the average number of motorcycles owned per person. From what I can tell, our shop’s customers tend to own about two bikes each. When you think about it that way, the actual numbers quickly double or triple, so the reality is harder to grasp from license holder statistics alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve given some thought to why prices are surging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Investment appeal: Excellent. As long as you pick the right bike, prices don’t crash\u2014they stay flat or trend upward. They don’t take up much space, and if you have garage room for one car, you could manage multiple bikes and make a pretty sweet investment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Hard to lose money on a classic. This overlaps with investment, but say you buy a bike for three million yen and sell it for three million four years later\u2014you’ve ridden it for free on maintenance costs and gained the experience of owning a legendary machine. Maybe that experience is priceless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Shrinking inventory. Since these were produced in the past, the total number can only go down. Export models might be plentiful, but domestic-spec bikes and 250cc, 400cc, and 750cc models are relatively low-volume globally. This might be driving prices up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Price comparison with current models. Back in the day, you could buy a flagship model for 1.2 to 1.5 million yen. Nowadays, even non-limited models regularly exceed two million.
When you compare like that, doesn’t an older bike start to look like a bargain? That might be driving purchases too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Your last bike. When you reach the age where you’re choosing your last motorcycle… what do you pick?
Say you don’t own one now and you’re coming back to riding.
Wouldn’t you want to own that bike you loved years ago one more time?
Even if it costs two million yen, I think you’d buy it. And if it doesn’t depreciate much, your buying impulse gets supercharged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe these reasons are what started the bubble. Fundamentally it’s a supply-and-demand issue, so I don’t think it’ll go on forever… though maybe I’m being naive?
Besides, maintaining an old bike is harder than you’d think. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A price surge unimaginable ten years ago. Fifteen years back, if you asked a thousand people, all thousand would say such a surge could never happen. So what’s happening right now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pochipp_cv_data":"","swell_btn_cv_data":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[269],"class_list":["post-30761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decoboco.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}