Looking through the various bike boards, it seems there is a growing discontent surrounding the eBay process versus the rewards, with more than a few people advertising stuff below expectations, to avoid ‘having to do the eBay thing’.

I’ve been doing the eBay thing for quite a while and for me, the buzz is still there. OK there are a few timewasters on the site, but then there always have been. The upturn in keyword spamming is a pain in the rear, as are the idiots advertising Porsche 911s for £3k Buy It Now with a phone number to call - in Borgovenia et al. The fees are a total rip-off, as are the utterly despicable Paypal charges, but then, if you want to play the eBay game, you have to pay your way. Fretting about it gets you precisely nowhere: it is what it is and no one at eBay is about to drop the charges. I don’t like them, but I do OK on eBay, so I pay up.

With the arrival of the Ducati, I’ve been buying bike bits on eBay for a few weeks now, and I’ve had some really killer results. Having paid over the odds at Hein Gericke Northampton for some Alpinestars SMX waterproof boots (£170, but I felt I had to, as the guy let me try on loads of stuff and there were other customers he could have sold to), I vowed to buy the rest of the kit I needed secondhand, and save some money.

Used bike gear is everywhere, and some of it is utter rubbish. When I had my Bandit, I had some good gear and some crap gear, and the crap gear ruined the ride.  Even things as silly as the wrong socks can freeze your feet and spoil the experience, so this time around I want only top notch stuff. Me being me, I don’t want to pay through the nose.

My biking/Porsche’ing buddy Andy Tims set the ball rolling by recommending Racer gloves. My last gloves were a pair of cheap leather summers and a pair of slightly tight Gericke winters, neither of which were fabulous. The summers were written off in the Streatham smash, so they were long gone. The winters I washed and they looked OK, but when I pulled the linings out to dry them, they had split in a few places and looked as cheap as an armed robber’s tights, so they had to go.

Racers are not cheap, but I added newly-listed Racer sales to my favourite ebay searches and a few hours later, up popped a pair of Airforce gloves which had only been worn a handful (groan) of times. Buy It Now at £45 and post £6: total price half what they cost in the shops. Andy had said buy a size larger and he was spot on: I bought XL and they are a perfect fit. The kangaroo skin palms are beautifully supple and they ride so nicely - like a second skin. I appreciate the carbon guards and skid dots also. Check a review of the gloves out here. I just bought a pair of winters from Cissbury Leathers on half-price offer, but they have yet to arrive, so I’ll file an opinion on those when I have used them.

Skimming through the listings on one of the UK bike forums, I found a chap selling a barely-used and now undersized Alpinestars T-Dyno textile jacket, the same one I used on my Runner. I loved that jacket, with its built in CE armour and simple clean styling,  so with this on sale for £70 posted (less than half the £150 that Gericke wanted), Paypal was sent immediately and It arrived a few days later. TOTAL BARGAIN! This is the same jacket - a great buy if you are in the market.

Next was a pair of trousers. I had never used leathers before and was keen to try them out, so when a pair of Alpinestars BAT pants in my size came up for £65 Buy It Now plus a tenner to post, they had to be bought. These retail at £180 plus and they are easily worth that; how comfortable are these trousers! They are a touch big in fact so am on the lookout for a slightly smaller pair now, will easily get my money back on the ones I bought, as they are like new. See them here. I am still on the lookout for Gericke textile trousers - watch this space.

The same day I bought the leathers, a chap down the country put a Gericke Tuareg jacket up for £25 Buy It Now. This is a £200 jacket and has everything I need: protection, Goretex, Sheltex, zip outs and the right size. Was a no-brainer to give it a try, so I bought that, washed it when it arrived and it is excellent. It’s the old Tuareg, not the new one, so is black with a bit of a German-themed back print but you can’t have everything. Better than the new grey patchwork equivalent in my eyes, and was a really great bargain, as I will get great use out of it.

 Next on the list was a back protector. I liked the Knox Ricochet, which I tried on and was perfect at Gericke Northants, so again they went onto the fave search list and eventually a new, unwrapped one turned up a few miles from me, in Brackley. I bid to win and it came in at £54 pus £7 post. I tried to get there a few times to collect, but the guy was impossible to pin down, so I had him post it as I wanted to start using it!  It’s good to wear, adds great confidence and I love it.

Finally, as I was using my track day Arai GP3 lid with a non-approved visor, I needed a bike lid. Having owned Shoei and Sparcos, Arai is all I want to wear these days. As I still miss my old Joey Dunlop Quantum F, I wanted another one of those (though not a  Joey rep). Eventually, one turned up on eBay and he offered me a decent Buy It Now price which I accepted. After that the emails dried up however, so I just bid to win, which I eventually did for £8 less than I had agreed. When it arrived, it was a bit grubby, but I took it all apart, pulled out the cheek pads, visor and the vent lid, cleaned it up with Vanish gel and warm water, dried it all on the rads at home, gave it a Zymol and it came up like new. Hooray for our team!

So now I have top quality bike gear, all very little use if any before me, and all for lots less than it would have cost to buy new. Still a few outstanding items I am watching out for, but I am chuffed so far. eBay - don’t you just love it?!