Late Night Ebay Purchases

It all started with a trip to Centre Parc’s…

I regretted not taking my bike because the tarmac looked smooth and I could slide around a bit. This wasn’t any fitness gains. Anyway seeing some 90’s gems in between all the usual crap got me thinking, I need another bike and a cheap-ish but interesting hardtail that can be used to take the kids out, leave outside a cafe and still make me happy when another cyclist who knows give me the nod to say this guy knows his stuff.

Of course I could have bought a Trek FX or Dual Sport to do this job, and it would have done it better than any old mountain bike but that’s too easy and I never do easy.

So I started looking for the one…

There are one or two of you reading this that get it, the rest won’t, but I was in Centre Parcs weighing up driving to Cheltenham to pick up a Scott Boulder for £150! Then common sense prevailed.

I have a few alerts setup on eBay, and one is for Yeti Arc’s.

Then this frame popped up. New old stock 2009 Yeti Arc. The year I started in the bike industry and when I was spending more than I earned on bikes and equipment, no change there!

All Yeti bikes looked amazing to me, especially the dirt jump bike and the Arc-X cyclocross frame which I still want when I find the right one.

I knew this would end up too bling for Centre Parc’s but I had to do it anyway.

Initially I wanted to build it as close to the 2009 bikes I used to see come out of the importer at the time, Evolution Imports. They used to bring in Yeti and Chris King so you knew their builds were always premium.

That would blow the initial budget of £500 totally out of the water, turns out good 26” Chris King wheels command strong money still probably because we all stopped selling them years ago, so to keep your 26er going with nice you still need to spend some.

Because times and tastes have changed and bars have got wider and stems shorter I was lucky and managed to pick up some bargains on EBay. I could only fit Thomson because at the time they were the best and I still love the finish on their seatposts now.

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