Unemployed Top Gear Hosts Make Scratch Selling Bikes

The currently unemployed television personalities consigned a number of their two-wheelers to Bonhams, which auctioned them off in Stafford this weekend. And what would you know, every one of them sold. Captain Slow sold off eight of his motorcycles – mostly small-displacement Japanese bikes – and the Hamster put another four up for auction, including two British bikes and two Japanese ones.

All told they brought in £77,625 – equivalent to over $117k at today's rates – with the top lot being Hammond's 2010 Norton Commando 961SE that sold for £15,180 ($23k), which is about what Norton gets for a new 961 in the UK.

Though both the affable show hosts were on hand to help move the metal, theirs weren't the only motorcycles on the docket at the event. Bonhams sold 86 percent of the lots it had consigned for the Spring Stafford sale, for a total of over £2.2 million ($3.3M). The top lot was a 1939 Vincent HRD Series-A Rapide that brought in a staggering £275,900 ($418k).