Motorcycles

We've been researching motorcycles and trying to find one that would be a good starter bike for me.

We didn't think Hubby's bike would work, but to be fair we tested it out. His Midnight Special is just to big and heavy. We looked into other older bikes and many are too tall or heavy for me to be comfortable, and those that aren't are shaft driven which makes walking them difficult to impossible to do.

Hubby and I have had an eye for Kawasaki Vulcans for years. Seriously, we looked at them back in Fort Wayne even before our second child was in the picture. Their smallest model is a 500cc engine, the next in the series is 800cc. With all this looking and researching we learned that Kawasaki stopped making their 500cc model with 2010. We also learned that this particular model is rather difficult to find in the state of CA.


We looked at new bikes in the local shops. They had mainly Honda Shadows, some Yamaha VStars, and a few Suzuki Boulevards for the size range I need (600 to 650cc seemed to be the best fit). After checking out these other motorcycles I really wanted to see a Vulcan 500 in person. As luck would have it, one (similar to this) popped up on craigslist this past weekend.

We looked at on Monday, but the asking price was at the high limits of excellent condition retail according to Kelly Blue Book. The bike has low miles and is in good condition, the second owner has only had it for a year but has kept it outside (the original owner kept in a garage). When we saw it, we had already set up to look at a few other bikes in the area, so we didn't make any hard offers. When the others just wouldn't work we contacted the seller again. Its still available. How do you negotiate a fair price when they're asking so much to begin with?