With Britain now on a one-way train out of the EU I guess we should start to consider if that decision will have any impact, good or bad, on our (the rest of the world’s) ability to purchase rare & collectible bikes.Will there be opportunities, are there any now, what will be the long-term outcomes?

All the EU signatory countries allow trade between each other free of Customs & Excise duties (VAT et al), but that will likely change.The EU is well pissed about Britain’s departure so there will be little concessions on offer when new trade agreements are formulated, and although Britain is expecting to save billions from no longer being obligated to their share of the EU bail-outs, they will need income, lots of it and fast!

Prior to joining the EU, UK citizens would cross the Channel in droves to buy cheaper goods; booze, fags, building materials, and of course, motorbikes & cars.From before the days of the Sherriff of Nottingham, and up until they joined the EU, Britain ran on an outrageously unfair tax system; anyone who earned a decent quid moved to tax havens or left to live elsewhere, so now, faced with an EU hell bent on punishing the recalcitrant UK, it’s more likely than not that she will reintroduce taxes on everything imaginable, and some that aren’t, let’s not forget, this is the country that dreamt-up a daylight tax; a tax calculated upon the number of windows one had in their home; hence the term, ‘daylight robbery’.

Currently Britain has a 26% duty on imported motorcycles, so that will now be applied to everything coming in to the UK from the rest of Europe, and the EU has similar excises, some higher, like Italy, so that will mean ditto for bikes out of the UK, bound for the rest of Europe.What does that mean for us?Well, insofar as bikes from the Old dart go, a lot will depend on whether the Pound stays soft, but a few cents in the dollar won’t off-set anything remotely close to a 20-25% increase in bike values, and unless the EU falls apart over the next 12 mths (not impossible) there’s no real reason why the Euro should soften much, if at all, ergo, if the above navel-gazing plays out then we can expect to see the values of all our much loved rare & collectibles increase by around 25%, and that is on top of values that have already left Australian values far behind.

For decades Aussies have been liberating bikes from the northern hemisphere, landing them here for thousands less than you could find the same bike locally.However, over the past few years local values have stagnated while global values have climbed, so much so that we’ve had a steady flow of bikes leaving our shores, a few that we’d actually imported only 5-6 years ago, so should we see the above scenario eventuate, there’s no doubting where most of our bikes will be heading!!

With the Pound up around 55p atm, you might want to get-in & grab yourself what might prove to be a bargain!