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Jay Leno’s VMAX Sold for $120K

Jay Leno’s own custom made Yamaha Star VMAX motorcycle went under the hammer the past weekend at the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction and sold for $120,000, with all the proceeds going to Bailey's Cafe, a community program that brings art education to some of New York's toughest neighborhoods.

Bailey’s Cafe was founded by Stefanie Siegel, an old college friend of Leno. The two had not seen each other for 18 years, until they met at the much anticipation auction. Before the auction kicked off, Leno joked that "Bailey's Café is an arts program, but I didn't have any Yamaha musical instruments to sell, so I thought I'd sell my Star VMAX, which is made by Yamaha."

Once Leno himself rode the VMAX, which featured an old-school hot rod-style paint job by Benny Flores, onto the auction stage, bidding quickly reached $60,000.

Since it seemed the bidding might stall at that point, Leno threw in a Garmin GPS system, then his Alpinestars jacket and Arai helmet, and a personal tour of his garage. As the bids reached $70,000-$80,000, Bob Starr announced that Yamaha's musical instrument division had donated 6 guitars and a drum set to the arts program. That helped Leno get another $5,000 from the bidders.

Though highly appreciated for his sense of humor, Leno was some times serious, saying, "You know what school funding is like," and "Every cent goes to the kids." Other times he adopted a stand-up tone joking that the alternative to running up the bid was having some poor kid in Brooklyn join a street gang.

Finally, the bidding ended at $120,000, which is about 8 times the MSRP. Moreover, Barrett-Jackson donated all the transaction's fees to the cause as well, so Siegel left Vegas with more than she initially hoped for.
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