I have a million more questions still but I'll ask what comes to mind first given your response. If it was the mid 90s, what was the method you'd find the bikes, I assume if it's more than one sandcast per month you're doing national searches, it must have been something like physical print cycle trader? And you would call and ask the seller for the VIN and EIN? Then drive out to them wherever they were and try to play it cool and get a good deal?
I've read your writeup on the Vic World site too and it mentions how you decided pretty early the bikes would be significant and started buying them up. I can say from my own experience the first K0 I saw for sale locally was in 2018 for $3500 and I said too much (kind of a bolt up chopper but had all the original paint)... later in 2023 I buy a bone stock one for $10,000... so ironic haha although the other is much much nicer. Still it's funny to me. In retrospect it seems event before the 90s-90s people should have realized the significance of the original inline 4 sport bike as that became the standard soon after.
I will take the time here to answer what you've written.
To find Honda parts, one thing i did was send letters out to all the Honda Dealers in the U.S., as well, I visited personally as many Dealers as I could, as well as contacting many bike junk yards.
This put me in contact (thru word of mouth) with "CB750 owners" sometimes as well, that "had an old CB750 lying around".
Yes, I DID search every week thru print material such as Cycle Trader, and other weekly rags (found at local 7-11s) that were sold, listing all kinds of things for sale, such as washing machines, cars, boats, motorcycles, etc.
As well as Walneck's Cycle Trader, and Old Bike Journal.
Many people in fact did NOT know what a "sandcast" was at the time...thinking it was "just an old CB750 Honda".
And yes, there WERE a Few key people than that I was competing with, that Did know what the bike was....and those few were filling containers with sandcasts (along with Z-1s, and 400-4s), and shipping those to Japan.
In 99% of the cases, I did not need to "play it cool" with the seller, as again he thought that he just had an old CB750...that he simply wanted out of his garage. The exception, was when I would have to fight against one of the "exporters"..all of a sudden offering big money.
Anyway, the landscape certainly changed once 2000 or so came around, and the sandcast became the new buzz word amongst all motorcycle enthusiasts.
Ok,Hope this clears this up.
Thanks,
Vic
