I imported a Black Shadow into Australia two years ago...
The "total" ban on asbestos has been in place since 2003, but my understanding is that it was only about two years ago that someone in power decided they needed to enforce it. Yours may have sneaked in just under the wire. By the way, the regulations are quite clear that even if you only temporarily send your bike out of Australia and then try to bring it back, that counts as importation and no asbestos is allowed.
There are too many points in this overall thread to pick quotes out of them, so I'll just make some random comments.
Overall, a decline in new motorcycle sales started at the time of the recession a decade ago and has continued. There are a mix of reasons for this. For example, the incredible array of motorcycle-related shops around Ueno Station in Tokyo already had nearly vanished as of a decade ago, heavily influenced by a change in Tokyo parking regulations that no longer favored motorcycles.
The steady rise in prices of Model T Fords that had continued for years hit a wall c1990 when people who had wanted them in their youth started rapidly aging their way out of the market. Younger people weren't there to take their place since the brakes and lack of h.p. of those cars made them suitable only for the occasional Sunday drive on quiet neighborhood roads. That is, in the modern world they were only good for looking at, not for using. I think it's a relevant aside to point out my 1928 Ariel 500 single had problems keeping up with traffic only on two 75+-mph segments of road when crossing the U.S. in the Cannonball last year (it actually could have kept up at that speed, but I was afraid reliability would suffer if I hammered it that hard).
A, say, BSA A7 can accelerate and brake with modern traffic but it's a motorcycle only someone who owned one 'back in the day' could love. So, it's not surprising if A7 prices start dropping as those starry-eyed oldsters age their way into retirement homes. Whether a BSA Gold Star suffers the same drop in price is subject to additional forces.
As to the question, do I really care about the monetary value of my bikes? The answer most certainly is 'yes'. All the money I squandered on motorcycles over the years is money my family didn't have available to squander on other things. So, I'd like to think when they sell off everything when I'm gone they can recoup as much of that squandered money as possible, and that they end up with roughly as much cash as they would have had if instead that money had been in stocks. That said, the bikes that bring the highest prices at Las Vegas auctions are shiny and in pristine external condition, so the fact I ride mine decreases their value. I mentally count my bikes as being worth as much as the highest prices paid for similar models at recent auctions, so the higher those prices, the better. But I know each of my bikes are worth a few dollars less because I ride them.
