Bike Raffle Opinions. What say you?

Same as a no reserve auction. Are you willing to let it go if you only sell 425$ of tickets? 

If its a restoration project/one off bike or something then cool. People trying to "waffle!" off their ragged out piece of shit 2023 Yz250f with 100 hours on it is so cringe to me. 

Then you look at the post and they are wanting 80 spots at $100 each. Its all just a ploy to make more $ off a used bike. 

You can set them up so it doesn’t go like that. I have friends who sell bikes every year for barely any loss with a “waffle”. They set up x amount of spots for x amount of dollars and won’t do the raffle until it’s full. If have enough eyes on it the raffle will fill quick with lots of people wanting a chance for only 1-200$. I think I put it $50 on one for a Grom for fun and the fuckers sat in the garage for three years. Just serviced it and put in a new battery so it’s good to sit another 3 years. 

I see these bike raffles on Facebook all the time now.  Just dudes using a raffle to try to sell their old bikes.  They typically have a set amount of entries they sell for $100 a piece (always way more than they would get for the bike if they tried to sell it).  I’m seeing roached 250s being raffled at $100 per ticket, but they won’t do the raffle until they sell 75 to 80 tickets.  

I honestly can’t believe people are dumb enough to send in their money for these raffles (always “waffles” on FB, since raffles are probably considered gambling and illegal).  What happens to the money you sent them if they never sell all the tickets?  Additionally, how would you ever know if the raffle is actually fair and unbiased?  The fact that people actually pay for these “waffle” tickets makes me realize how addictive gambling really is for some people.

Honestly I see what you’re saying but I would not enter one not knowing the person putting it on. Guys who I know live stream doing it and use a random number generator and always refund if the waffle doesn’t fill or get full enough. Like you said lots of people are setting it up so they make sometimes thousands more than the bike is worth. 

Starling and Chisholm do them, they usually cap them at a certain number and charge like $100 per ticket. They call them "waffles" for some reason. I think it gets them out of paying taxes. Chisholm is doing one now unless all of the tickets are sold. I tried to get in on it, but didn't get a message back on how to pay with Venmo so I gave up. I tried using Zelle, but was having issues with it sending. I'm probably better off since I never win anything.

I would probably only enter a "waffle" if it was a pro's bike, even if it's a practice bike. Even bidding on a pro's practice bike is pretty risky, let alone someone's restoration bike. No offense, the bike looks great.

Looks amazing.  What were you thinking for spaces/ticket prices?