The rarest of rare vintage motorcycles, these decades-old machines are challenging to start and difficult to ride. Yet they are becoming more expensive to purchase despite — and some say because of — the down economy.

For years, ultra-obscure bikes such as a 1936 Crocker Twin or a 1907 Curtiss V-8 were collected by a small handful of moneyed gearheads. They had such deep appreciation for the unique designs and temperaments of these machines that they'd willingly use their shins as heat guards, repurpose their feet as brake shoes and consider it a deal to pay tens of thousands of dollars to experience such evolutionary technology.

Now, they're paying six figures. And the price increases are happening even as the market for new motorcycles is tanking.

More collectors are getting into the market and driving up prices for rare motorcycles, many of which have doubled or tripled in value in as many years. They're fueled by a sputtering stock market that has investors putting their money into hard goods, a weak dollar that's drawing European buyers and vintage car collectors who see historic bikes as a significantly less expensive fulfillment of their multimillion-dollar desires for ancient pistons and camshafts.

“Good machines have been performing well over the last few years, and prices are still on the ascent,” said Mark Osborne, head of the motorcycle and motorcars division at Bonhams & Butterfields. The English auction house is offering about 70 vintage motorcycles at this weekend's Quail Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel, Calif. The event will offer an additional 115 bikes for show on the lawns of the Quail Lodge.

Osborne noted that the most expensive bike ever auctioned through Bonhams — a $383,400 supercharged Vincent Black Shadow — was sold in October, just as the worldwide economy was diving.

“We put it down to the fact that people like to buy something that they can touch, smell and enjoy,” he said. “They can get out and use these things. It's not like paper held in a bank that's sort of disappearing on a daily basis.”

This weekend's show is the two-wheeler version of a car show called The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering, which takes place in August. It's the first of two esteemed car-centric events that are branching into bikes for the first time in their long and rarefied histories. In August, the Pebble Beach Concours will also include motorcycles for the first time in the event's 59 years.

“I've been with the Concours almost 25 years, and I don't think there's been a year that's gone by that somebody hasn't requested a motorcycle class,” said Sandra Kasky Button, chairwoman of the Pebble Beach event. “We've always resisted the pressure and stayed focused on cars. It really is time.”

The market for new motorcycles is down 30% so far this year, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council. And sales of high-production vintage bikes such as Harley-Davidson Panheads from the '50s, '60s-era Triumph Bonnevilles and '70s Honda CB750s have softened along with the economy.

But the market for motorcycle manufacturers of the long-ago, lesser-known and mostly defunct variety has seen dramatic increases. Prices for Crocker, a Los Angeles-based marque from the '30s that's known to have produced a mere 39 bikes, have quadrupled in the last five years. Others that are bringing top dollar include the British manufacturer Vincent, original-condition bikes from pre-World War II American manufacturers and anything with a racing pedigree.

The 1957 Manx Norton ridden to victory by Brit Derek Minter is expected to fetch as much as $100,000 this weekend. The Vincent “Gunga Din” crashed in defeat by racer George Brown in 1948 could bring more than $200,000 at Pebble Beach.

“The factory race bikes, these seem to be the bikes that get people's attention and seem to draw the most amount of money right now,” said Jeff Ray, executive director of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Ala.

The museum, which owns 1,100 motorcycles, is on the hunt for more but is waiting for the market to settle.

“There's a saying in collecting motorcycles: 'You never pay too much, you just buy too soon.' If a 1915 Harley-Davidson twin was offered 10 years ago at $150,000, people would have thrown rocks at the guy and told him he'd lost his mind. Well, one just sold for $165,000 in January,” Ray said. “We're putting our hands in our pockets and standing on the sidelines and watching.”

Don Whalen, a collector in Monrovia, is taking a similar stance.

“My partner and I used to buy 10 to 12 bikes a year,” said Whalen, 63, who for the last 40 years has been collecting primarily pre-1920 motorcycles from the dozens of American manufacturers that existed at that time. “Now we buy two or three or one, if it's an important one.”

Of the 160 bikes in Whalen's collection, about 30 came from Otis Chandler, the former Los Angeles Times publisher who was an avid motorcyclist and collector of exceedingly rare, high-end motorcycles. After his death in 2006, the auction of his dozens-strong collection provided momentum to a market that was already gaining speed.

The current craze has its seeds in the Guggenheim's Art of the Motorcycle show that toured the world in the late '90s. Showcasing hundreds of bikes from motorcycling's history, the exhibit broadened the public's view of a sport that, at the time, was dominated by Harley-Davidson cruisers and Japanese sport bikes.

The Art of the Motorcycle was also the inspiration for Legend of the Motorcycle, an annual showcase and auction of premium vintage bikes that started in 2006. The event further raised the profile of exotic, two-wheeled machines that founder Jared Zaugg said have been “giving men instant sex appeal since 1869.”

My name is SSgt KC Sanger. I just wanted to write and say thanks for a great website. The little time I get on a computer over here in Iraq is spent checking out your site. I have been going to this site every week for the last 3 years. When I get back to LeJeune next year I am looking forward to getting a membership to the cantina and catching up on the news. Anyway, I thought I might share the story of my trip this past year to Sturgis.

I am originally from a small town in SD called Redfield, which is about five hours from Sturgis. In May, a couple of my buddies and I decided to make the ride to Sturgis since we were going to be in the middle east for a year and wouldn't be able to ride. As the day to leave approached, they started making excuses, and one by one my group dwindled.

Finally the day arrived, and I called the only riding partner I had left and he said that he couldn't make it. Not wanting to miss the trip and having made plans to meet my brother, who was hauling his bike up from Cali, I rushed home from work and strapped the small bag packed with tools, oil and one change of clothes, to my short back fender. I strapped on my pistol and leather jacket, taped my directions to my tank and rolled out of Jacksonville,NC on my own.

About 40 miles out, as I pulled onto I40, the sunshine turned to rain. It was a very wet ride all the way into W Virginia. It finally stopped raining about 10:00, and I pulled into a truckstop to catch a couple hrs of sleep on a bench. I woke up the next morning to a light mist and rode a couple miles down the road to a waffle house for a cup of strong coffee and a quick bite to eat.

As I pulled back onto the road, the rain started falling again and continued until I rolled into KY. As soon as I crossed the state line I pulled my soggy ass over for gas and asked about the helmet laws. FINALLY!!!! The rest of the trip with no brain bucket. I got about another three hours in the saddle before the rain started again. As I pulled back onto the road after a gas stop, I rolled up to speed and looked down at my directions and the wind caught my glasses, promptly removing them from my head. I didn’t pack another pair. I pulled off onto the side of the road and walked back looking for pieces. I found most of what was left, about a mile back, picked up the pieces and rode to an overpass to escape the fresh patch of rain and taped them back together. About time that I slogged into upper corner of Iowa the rain stopped and out came the sun. A hundred-and-five friggen degrees!! I was about an hour from Sioux Falls, so I stopped for some gas and water and jumped back on the road. I stopped at the local Harley shop in SF to meet my brother and pick up a new pair of glasses, and I gotta tell ya, it turned out to be the worst eighty bucks I've ever spent. Those glasses were worthless!

We pulled onto the road once again for the five hour ride to Redfield to visit with my old man. Once we got there we took a couple days to rest our bodies, well, my body anyway, and catch up since that was my first time home in three years. During that time I went on a couple rides with my dad so he could get used to the bike he had borrowed from a buddie. He made the final run to the badlands with my brother and I.

From there the rest of the way to Sturgis was terrific. We only got to spend two days in town due to my brother’s Miramar schedule for pre-deployment training.Just an hour outside of Sturgis on our way back, the lack of rain and high heat started a good number of fires, one of which was flailing across the road we were traveling. We went back a mile to a 3 or 4-mile gravel road to reach the next hiway. That “short” bit of gravel turned into 32 miles of VERY loose gravel. After that, the rest of the way into Redfield went well.

The rest of the trip back to NC went down like cold beer on a warm day. I would not have missed it for anything. I met lots of great people and made some lifelong friends as well as getting to ride with my old man and brother. I am going to miss out this year due to being deployed, but won’t miss out again.

All in all, I clocked about five thousand miles on throughout the whole trip and had a great time. I'm looking forward to getting back and joining the Cantina and getting myself a Bandit’s Bedroll.

–KC

Editor's Note:Jared is the youngest employee on the US Avon Tyre staff. Enjoy his youthful inspiration. –Bandit

I remember a particular enlightening time in my life. It contained quite possibly my single greatest act of stupidity, and ended up teaching me more than I will probably ever be able to really put into words.  I was riding too fast on icy roads and lost control of my motorcycle, then highsided into a telephone pole.  I blacked out at first, when the bike skidded, but I remember waking up as I hit the ground on my back, unable to breath or move.  A lot of things happened after that.

I ended up in the hospital with a titanium rod in my left leg where just a femur had been the day before, and an incision running the entire length of my torso that looked poorly stapled back together.  The doctor had cut me open to put all my organs back to where they should have been, sew my lacerated liver back together, and cleaned up all the internal bleeding that had occurred in the meantime.

I almost died, and the creepy thing is that I didn’t even know it until after the fact.  I turned and looked at my girl friend when I woke up.  She didn’t know whether to cry or smile, and neither did I.  I smiled.  She cried. I will never forget waking up and not recognizing my own body.  I will never forget having more tubes and hoses running in and out of me than I cared to count.  Water to this day still tastes like it never did before, because I couldn’t drink anything for a week. 

The crash had bruised my stomach and intestines to the point where they would not function, their contents pumped through a tube that ran up my throat and out my nose, green and black and bloody.  Just like the urine in the bag below my bed.  Drinking without a functioning digestive system will wear a hole in your stomach.  So I couldn’t drink, anything.  My friends would swab my mouth with a damp sponge.  I couldn’t eat for a week either.  

I will never to this day, almost 4 years later, let a meal go to waste.  Everything still tastes good to me. Doesn’t matter what it is or how poorly it is prepared, It all tastes good.I keep wondering what all this did to me.  I don’t think I’ve ever really been the same since.  I just wonder where my place is in this life.  I struggle all the time.  I sometimes feel as though maybe to my friends, family, and loved ones, I am a bit like an animal.  You pet it and feed it and are generally nice to it, but you never really let it all the way in.  There seems to be something violent about me.  The way I take life.  The way I struggle to control it and not let it take control of me.

I think that’s maybe why I ride.  There is some connection maybe between the act of riding and the way my life always seems to play out.  The bike has definitely changed for me over the past years. What it means to me and what place it holds in my life.  It was at first an outlet for my aggression and compensation for a lack of self-confidence. Almost something evil.  I would be cool and cover it up by saying something like “I ride to live.” I didn't have any idea what the hell I was spewing out.  I was angry. Pure and simple.  But it’s funny.  I think I get it now.

Now I ride for the pure and simple pleasure of it. I catch myself actually living my own lie.   Not to live, but to remind me to appreciate why I live.  To remind me that I DO live.  The sheer violence of the whole experience of riding,  the asphalt shredding below you, the wind that pushes and thrashes to fill all void,  the power of explosions tamed and tuned into something more precise than a razor's edge driving your foreword, the orchestra of intake and exhaust and valves and gears and chain and resonation; all serve as reminders that death, the end, is always just four inches below your toes. 

On the bike, you break free of the box.  The world outside isn’t just a part of another movie you see through the box of a window like the boring part of a film you’d like to fast foreword through.  NO. You are in it.  You are a part of it.  You feel it, smell it, play with it, make your peace with it.

Life can be like the road at night.  There are the bright spots, were the road is illuminated by streetlights.  You'll fly around a corner and the lamp light catches the fog just so, and the entire world is bathed in gold.  Everything around you is beautiful.  The world glows.  But you can never stop in one place.  There is always change. 

Then sometimes you roll into a dark spot where you are away from the streetlights and all is bleek around you.  Your only proof that you are moving are the two lines on your left and right ticking away like the hands of a clock, constant and unstoppable.  But no matter how dark it gets, you can always be sure that there is another street light, another bright place, somewhere on the road ahead just waiting for you to reach it.  You just can’t stop.  And as long as you don’t, you’ll always make it to the next bright place.  

When you’re in these darkest places, you can always look up.  Up there are the most beautiful stars you will ever see.  I looked up tonight and I saw Orion so bright it was like he was painted on the sky above me.  I saw this with nothing between me and him but my own eyes, the air I was breathing, and space.  No windows, no shields, no filters.  Just me. You can’t tell if the tears are from the beauty of it all, the thoughts that enter your head at times like this, or from the wind stinging your eyes. I can’t take all the credit.  I have my helmet on.  A helmet is a lot like your family.  It protects the most important part and always does its best to keep the outside world from hurting you.  And without my gear on I'd freeze.  Friends are like that.  They help protect you as well and keep you warm when you need it.  Without any of these things I wouldn't be able to be here. Thank you all.

I guess I don’t know where I really meant to go when I started this.  It’s really just all the thoughts that I had to get out of my head while I was riding home tonight.  This life keeps me confused most of the time.  I try to make a feeble attempt at times to figure it out by throwing my thoughts onto a piece of paper and seeing if they make sense but it always seems like I've forgotten something, just bringing up more questions.

I have so much to learn and it frustrates me. I don’t want another moment to go to waste.   I don’t want to miss anything.  I don’t want any of it to go to waste.And just like that, the thoughts leave your head like a corner on the road behind you.  Still leaning through the corner, you twist the throttle and grab another gear and take enough moments to savor the sound of the engine.  She sings her song of potential violence, repeating her own serenity prayer. In your mind you hum along with her.This beats driving a car anyday.