Think back to August 2025, when I drew your attention to an upcoming RM Sotheby's motorcycle auction in Munich. The item in question, listed as a 1988 Yamaha XT500 still in its crate, was pretty special. Most people who love these bikes love them because they've ridden them, not kept them in their crates for decades.
While XT500s themselves aren't super rare to find, the fact that it was still essentially a brand new bike (albeit, one with decades of age and the kind of issues that only develop from not having been ridden or maintained for years) set it apart. And, as such, RM Sotheby's expected the final auction price to be somewhere between €15,000 and €25,000, or equivalent to about US $17,500 and $29,000 back in August 2025.
How wrong were they, exactly? When all was said and done, this little box of vintage Yamaha joy went for over three times the top amount they thought it would fetch.
