[liability]

> > their competitiveness isn't just about their cycling stats, but buying from the cheapest source.

> Well, yea. Competitive cyclists want to buy that $1000 power meter, or those $2500 ENVE wheels as cheap as possible.

Is this the ultimately the market for parts from bike chop shops? What I never quite understood is how parts from stolen bikes are turned into cash; some of it doubtlessly goes through eBay or craigslist, but those sites are new and bike theft isn't. My suspicion is that a lot of stolen parts somehow find their way back onto store shelves as "second hand" parts that can be sold at very low prices for a large profit.

[walrus01]

People are hopefully not locking up bicycles with power meters, or full Dura-Ace di2 or similar in public to be stolen by the local metro area's drug addicts.

Anybody who lives in a sufficiently large city, and rides a bike worth more than about $1,000 or so, knows that they will never be locking it up and walking away from it anywhere.

[liability]

Maybe not those accessories in particular, but what of the rest of the bike? Tons of bikes are clearly getting stolen.

[olyjohn]

I think a lot of them are just cheap crappy bikes that get cut up for scrap too. Someone stole my heavy-ass steel 90s Schwinn mountain bike that was worth maybe $50 used at the time. I had a big ass lock on it too, and they cut right through it with one clean snip. I was pretty pissed because I had just fixed it all up, but there weren't any expensive components on it... Not sure what kind of money could be made on it. Maybe a few bucks at a pawn shop?

Also around Seattle, I have noticed a lot of places that look like homeless camps, but right smack in the middle is a huge pile of hundreds of bicycles. Just sitting there outside. Part of me thinks that a lot of bike thefts could be mentally ill people collecting and hoarding them.

[walrus01]

I agree they are, but from watching the several local social media groups in my metro area which are trying to keep track of stolen bikes, everything that I see stolen, if it were road would be Tiagra level or lower components, or if MTB/city bike would be deore equivalent or cheaper.

The main exception would be downhill bikes that are occasionally stolen from garages.