Billy Joel will auction off over 70 vintage motorcycles from his personal collection at an upcoming sale, Nov. 20 and 21.
The auction is being overseen by Gooding Christie’s and Rétromobile New York Auctions, with the sale itself taking place at the Javits Center in New York City. Before they hit the auction block, a selection of Joel’s motorcycles will be on display, too, at Christie’s Rockefeller Center, from Oct. 8 through 12.
To call Joel a “vintage motorcycle enthusiast” feels like an understatement. The musician has been collecting and restoring vintage bikes for decades. And for 15 years, he operated 20th Century Cycles on Long Island, a shop for storing and servicing his bikes that doubled as a free museum to showcase his collection. (The shop closed in 2025.)
“I’ve always been drawn to bikes built by people who cared about getting every detail right,” Joel said of the sale in a statement. “I’ve loved building this collection. Now it’s someone else’s turn to hit the road.”
Joel’s bike collection spans several decades and includes bikes manufactured by top-of-the-line makers like Ducati, BMW, Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Honda, Kawasaki, and Moto Guzzi. Among the more notable lots are a 1982 Ducati 900 designed as a replica of the bike British racing driver Mike Hailwood drove to victory at the 1978 Isle of Man TT (estimated price $25,000 to $35,000); and a 1978 Triumph T140 Bonneville, which was gifted to Joel by Madison Square Garden after he played his record-setting 150th sold out show at the arena. That bike also comes with a matching helmet adorned with the datesof every show he played at MSG. (Estimated price $10,000 to $15,000.)
Proceeds from the auction will go to supporting the musician’s charity, the Joel Foundation.
Motorcycles have also been a recurring motif in Joel’s music and visuals throughout his career. There’s his 1992 demo, “Motorcycle Song” (released on the compilation My Lives in 2005), and the “Uptown Girl” video famously ends with Joel and his future wife, Christie Brinkley, driving away together on a motorcycle.
Then there’s Joel’s Glass Houses track “You May Be Right,” which includes the lines, “Even rode my motorcycle in the rain/And you told me not to drive/But I made it home alive/So you said that only proves that I’m insane.” Two years after releasing that song, in 1982, Joel was involved in a motorcycle crash that severely damaged his hand.
“My left wrist got pulled out of the socket and dislocated,” Joel recalled to Rolling Stone in 2017. “My left thumb got crushed and I was in the hospital looking at my hand — but it really wasn’t all that worried about it because I was never that great a piano player to begin with. I wasn’t Vladimir Horowitz. I wasn’t a classical musician so my technique really didn’t suffer that much.”
