You Won't Believe How Much Someone Paid For This Still-Crated Vintage Yamaha Motorcycle

Finding a still-crated example of a 1988 Yamaha XT500 is rare enough that Sotheby's thought it would fetch between €15,000 and €25,000, but they were super wrong.

Photo by: Loic Kemen/RM Sotheby's

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Oct 27, 2025 at 7:01am ET

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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.

The final price at the auction held on October 18, 2025? A cool €84,000, which is about US $97,566 at the time of writing. Would you pay almost $100K for an XT500, even one that's still its crate like this?

What do you think?

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Clearly, someone must really love these bikes to have paid that much for it. That's also not counting any and all of the buyer's fees, shipping costs, and all the other sundry costs that will no doubt need to change hands in order for the auction winner to finally take delivery of their extremely new XT500.

For comparison, this bike wasn't the most expensive item sold at the Munich 2025 Sotheby's auction. In fact, it wasn't even the most expensive motorcycle. That honor went to a 2024 BMW R 18 Transcontinental signed by Pope Leo XIV, which fetched a cool €156,000 (about US $181,195 at the time of writing), which will reportedly be donated to the charitable organization Missio Austria.