Buying A Secondhand Bike Safely
A secondhand bike can be a genuinely great deal — or it can be someone else's stolen property with a new price tag. Here's how to tell the difference before you hand over any money.
Run the serial number before you pay anything
Ask the seller for the frame serial number (bottom bracket, headtube, or rear dropout) and check it on SpokeID's free serial checker — no account needed. A clean result isn't an absolute guarantee, but a result showing the bike is reported stolen is an immediate, definitive reason to walk away.
Don't trust a sticker — check the number on the frame itself
If the bike has a QR sticker and you scan it, that only tells you about whichever bike the sticker was originally registered to. Stickers peel off. A thief can move one from a legitimate bike onto a stolen one, so a scan can come back completely clean on a stolen bike. The number stamped into the frame can't be moved — so always find it and check it matches the serial the scan showed you, character for character. If there's no frame number, or it doesn't match, walk away no matter how clean the result looked.
Ask for proof of ownership
A legitimate seller can usually produce a receipt, a registration record, or at least a consistent story about where and when they bought it. Hesitation, evasiveness, or a refusal to share the serial number at all is a real warning sign.
Be wary of a price that's too good
A price well below genuine market value for the model is one of the most consistent signals across real stolen-bike resale cases — sellers moving stolen goods want a fast, low-friction sale more than a fair price.
Meet safely, in daylight, in public
Meet in a well-lit public place, ideally somewhere with other people around — a police station forecourt or a busy café are both genuinely common, sensible choices for secondhand handovers.
Check the listing photos make sense
Reverse-image-search a suspiciously polished listing photo — stolen bikes are sometimes advertised using the original owner's own photos, lifted from an old marketplace listing or social post.
Register the transfer once you buy it
After a genuine purchase, get the seller to transfer ownership to you on SpokeID (or register it fresh if it wasn't on the registry). You now have your own verified, dated record proving it's legitimately yours.