What Should A Dealer Do?

[kilo]

a few years ago i was dealing heavily in vintage bmx bikes and parts. someof you know what i'm talikng about, some dont of course, but please bear with me here....

one day a friend calls me up (a competative dealer/collector friend i might add) and asks me what i think a chrome hutch windstyle frame might be worth. i inform him that no windstyler frames were ever issued in chrome, (which is quite true), so if it really is what he says that it had to be an aftermarket job. he tells me that he just bought one for $50 earlier in the day and says he will bring it up to the house for me to see (showing off pretty much). when he shows up i do get a chance to have a thorough look at it. i tell him it is most deffinitally NOT a windstyler frame, although it IS of high-quality based on the welds/chrome job/dropouts/etc, although i do not know what it is. i decided to make him what i thought was a fair offer based on what little info i had (which was pretty much nothing). i offered to triple his money, figuring it might leave me with around $50 or so of profit margin to work with, (keep in mind, this is only based on the quality of craftsmanship i can see in the frame, and still know nothing of who made it). he takes the offer and is quite happy. he just tripled his money in less than 12hrs, and is quite happy make sure i know this. i spend roughly the next 4 months sifting through information, emailing pics with other dealers, and talking on the phone with high-end collectors about this frame. finally some credible information comes through! turns out that said frame is an excedingly rare revcore freestyler of which roughly only 75 or so were made, and i get an approximate value of what it should retail at: around $500-600. ok, now i am informed! i list it on the bay with a bin of $450 (leaving someone else room for their own profit margin of course) and lasts all of about 10 minutes. a few days go by and the "friend" asks me if i had any luck on finding out what that frame that he tripled his money on. so i give tell him everything i found out and that it had sold (and, yes, for how much -we were friends after all-). all of the sudden he gets PISSED!
edited to add: i should add that he was pissed off at me. saying how i had ripped him off. and that now i owe him money.

anybody wanna tell me why he is not my friend anymore?



--mike kilo.

[PolarBear]

I don't think you did anything wrong in the bike frame transaction. You took a chance on something that was unidentified and spent time and effort doing your own research to add value to it.

Nothing wrong with that. Too bad your "friend" didn't see it that way.