Remember that 2001 Honda CR500 we showed you last week, in the 4 Sale column? In case you were wondering about the selling price, the eBay listing says it closed at a cool $78,100 USD on April 18.
Why so high? The bike’s biggest selling point was that it was new-in-the-crate, not a restoration or resto-mod. The seller was Ken Kaplan, the guy behind Kaplan Cycles’ classic motorcycle sales as well as the New England Motorcycle Museum. The eBay listing played up the new-in-crate angle pretty heavily:
2001 was the Final Year and the Lowest Production
It is the peak of CR500 development
The most modern and refined examplePure Unobtanium – There are 0 comparable sales for CR500’s in the crate.
Crated examples have proven to be the pinnacle of investment motorcycles –
A crated 1986 ATC250R recently sold for $200,000
But interestingly, the comment section below last week’s story pointed out at least two other new-in-crate Honda CR500s in the US, both 1999 models. Maybe a purist would want an ’01, and maybe they wouldn’t, but it is worth pointing out that you can still find crated motorcycles if you’re in the right place at the right time with the right people.
Would you ride it, or leave it in the crate? Photo: Kaplan Cycles/eBay
These are not quite unobtanium, although they are certainly super-rare, and that’s how Kaplan Cycles managed to get big bucks at the eBay auction. In fact, I have not heard of a Japanese dirt bike selling for more than this amount, although it might certainly have happened. The most-expensive-ever Japanese motorcycle sold at auction was a 1997 Honda NSR500V that sold for $267,607 in the winter of 2025, and this CR500 certainly has a long way to go before it catches up to that.
If you want to ogle more photos and see Kaplan’s description of what makes this bike special, see the eBay listing here.
