I personally never got the chance to meet Ron. I had heard stories both ways. Many were that the guy would yell at you if you touched anything and would want $100 for a bolt laying in the dirt. I knew a couple guys that had some luck with him. But you had to approach him a certain way and much of the stuff he was attached to and didn't even want to sell it. Yeah I don't know why the news all said he lost all of it, because there was alot there when i went. There was about 1200 bicycles, and over 1000 motorcycles and a bunch of random stuff such as gold carts, 3 wheelers, snowmobiles, go carts and cars. There was a z1, a sandcast, some british bikes, a ton of 2 stroke triple suzukis, quite a few rd's, 2 h1's, 1 h2, some s model triples and a whole bunch of other bikes.
The part that i can't figure out, after moving your stuff from washington and losing a bunch of it in the fire, why wouldn't you move it when you're given two years to clean up that lot. He literally lost all of it.
Dunno how I missed this but I'm gonna follow now. And... I can add a little to the story.
I went to that yard in Rye when I first moved to AZ in '97. I bought a 350F in Phoenix for $500, but it had rusted out exhaust. I had seen the yard in Rye, so went there with a friend and bought a stock 400F exhaust that was in nice shape for $100. He had a stock 4-4 350F exhaust in decent shape that he would have sold me for the same price, and yes, I kick myself to this day that I didn't get both (I only needed one at the time...). I discovered Bob's just after (and have since, over the years, pulled all the worthwhile 350F and 400F parts, or at least most) as well as a guy named Stan who has a yard full of old Japanese bikes as well as an old Indian racer and a few others. I digress.
I went back to Rye maybe a year later, and things had changed. They followed you around the yard. If you went with more than one person, you couldn't split up and go to different places in the yard. You couldn't
touch anything. They wanted ridiculous prices for junk. I went with a guy interested in some of the old Schwinns and other bikes, and he wanted ridiculous money for them too. And he was an a$$hole about it. Went back once or twice just to go for rides from Phoenix with friends knowing what we would encounter when we got there, but just to ride and have a laugh.
When the yard went up in smoke, we all talked about it (and there was no way there were 9000 bikes -- including bicycles -- in there, we all figured it was an attempt at an insurance scam). Most people believed that the place had become a meth operation, and that's what caused the fire. The way the guy, his wife, and her sister behaved and looked, that's entirely plausible. The stuff that went up in smoke, however, was the stuff in the warehouse, which was most of the good and valuable stuff -- Harleys, quite a few old Brit bikes, boxes of rare parts, all of the valuable bicycles, etc. He had an amphibicar that got burned but mostly survived, and a few other old cars that didn't survive.
If you went up to Rye after Rod and the guys at Bob's bought him out, you were probably on their list of friends or in the right place at the right time. I had just moved back to Phoenix from two years on the east coast, and they called me to see if I wanted anything before they moved it down to Phoenix. From Rye I got a 350F, CL175 sloper that was burned to a crisp but looked cool, 750A exhaust in real nice shape, and a CB77. Once they got their stuff down to Phoenix, I bought a couple more bikes off of them, including a '71 CL450 and a weird Yamaha scooter thing that had a killer tank and seat for a café, as well as some random stuff, exhausts, etc. The bikes that came from Rye, Bob's only wants to sell whole, although that will likely change over time. I know they sold a #$%* ton of bikes to the local Phoenix bicycle guys, and sold a ton of bikes to people from Japan -- a few containers worth.
I have no idea whatever happened to the Rye guy, but I was going back and forth to Albuquerque from February to April 2016, so I saw the bikes disappear over time (Mondays, when Bob's was closed, they'd bring trucks and trailers up there, and then eventually paid someone to bring the rest). As for Bob's, those guys are the best. I hear some people moan about them or their prices or policies, but I've been going there for 20 years now and they've always treated me right. They give me t-shirts and hats -- and if I make the mistake of wearing one when I go to the yard to look for something, people coming in for parts inevitably ask me for stuff as though I work there.
Again, psyched to follow this to see where another one of the Bob's-via-Rye bikes shows up. The only thing I have left now is the CB77 and it's on the backburner in Phoenix at a friend's since I live in CDMX now.
