I wrote this article a few days ago.. and it is now out of date!!!! The Harley Davidson “Captain America” bike from Easy Rider is now the most expensive motorcycle sold at auction. Going for $1.35 million US this is reportable the bike that was destroyed at the end of the movie and rebuilt a few years later. The “other” Captain America bike was stolen before the movie was finished and has never been seen again except for the fact that the man who authenticated this motorcycle as also authenticated another one as well….. hummmm. Here is a link to help explain this crazy story.

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I ran across a couple interesting articles on motorcycles at Gizmag.com on this subject. I was quite surprised at what I found as I read about the results of motorcycle auctions. I will not go in a lot of details, you can use the links below to read that and you should. The link also discusses the content of the top 100 bikes sold at auction.

What surprised me the most was the fact that the number one most expensive bike was one of which I have never heard. The top ten are:

1 – US$580,000 – 1910 Winchester

2 – US$551,200 – 1915 Cyclone Board Track Racer

3 – US$480,000 – 1939 BMW RS255 Kompressor

4 – US$463,847 – 1922 Brough Superior SS80

5 – US$452,234 – 1926 Brough Superior SS100

6 – US$450,000 – 1958 Ariel 650 Cyclone

7 – US$448,156 – 1929 Brough Superior SS100

8 – US425,943 – 1939 Brough Superior SS100

9 – US$394,101 – 1934 Brough Superior SS100

10 – US$383,317 – 1949 Vincent Black Lightning

Turns out that the person who bought the bike was a gun collector. I am very aware of the collector’s value of the name Winchester as several folks that I know collect Winchester. According to what I read only about 200 were made and only a few survived.

Winchester attempted to “diversify” and move into motorcycling along the lines of BSA and Royal Enfield which were also gun makers. Winchester had the bikes built and badged by another company and only stayed in the bike business for a few years. You can learn more about at the links below.

Now if you look at all of the top 100 most expensive bikes sold you would find that:

Brough Superiors in top 100 – 23

Vincent-HRDs in top 100 – 14

Harley-Davidsons in top 100 – 9

BMWs in top 100 – 8

Crockers in top 100 – 7

Indians in top 100 – 5

Ducatis in top 100 – 4

Flying Merkels in Top 100 – 4

Hendersons in Top 100 – 2

Iver Johnsons in Top 100 – 2

Hildebrand & Wolfmüllers in Top 100 – 2

To read more on the Winchester click here.

To read more on the Top 100 click here.