General Cycling Discussion - there should a bicycle blue book

they have the kelly blue book for cars there should one for bikes it would make my life soo much easier, trying to sell my bike or an estimate of how much the bike I'm looking for would cost.:)

I believe Bicycling Australia (not affiliated with Bicycling magazine in the US) publishes a bicycle buyers guide annually. I've never bothered to read it though. When I'm buying a new bike, I rely on test rides and instinct.

mountain bike magazine has the same kind of thing, but you know on a used bike some people personalize their bike so not everything is stock, so for me, a newbie kind of, makes it harder to figure what price I should be paying or selling.

The best blue book is the real world. Watch eBay and track prices on similar bikes there and you will get a good feel for what things are selling for. Not a quick read, but is quite accurate if you have a few weeks to watch. Some go high and some go low, but it all averages out to what the world is willing to pay.

There is.

http://www.bicyclelink.com/index.lasso

It's not free and I'm not sure of it's accuracy but I do use it and ebay data as well.

Blake

I find that the Local Bike Shop is the best resource in that regard.

The LBS sold my last two bikes for me at reasonable prices. That way I knew that I wasn't ripping anyone off by charging too much or ripping myself off by charging too little.

I also had a case a number of years back when I wanted to sell a bike to a friend. I told the LBS that I wanted to know what a fair price would be both for me and my friend. That worked very well for both of us.

Here's something I put together for folks looking to purchase used tandem bicycles.

http://home.att.net/~thetandemlink/usedhome.html

The bottom line seems to be that a bicycle is worth what anyone is willing to pay for it and/or what someone is willing to let it go for.

The centric BlueBook for bicycles is in print and there is a website.

The problem is that there is limited information. The website hasn't been updated with information about bicycle models since the year 2000. The database is also limited to the dates of 1994 to 2000. Really, there should be an update! I am truly surprised that the publisher would let something like that go 9 years without finding someone to keep it updated.

I personally think that a bike shouldn't be treated as a car. It seems to me that they are way overpriced as with many things in the economy. It is my dream to have people only charge for the actual cost of material, not the development of technology. After all, that should be done at the university level, not the corporate. As it sits, the economy is being blamed for a lot of things, but this government is supposed to be a government of the people. Therefore, it is the people who make choices that effect the other people. So, paying lots of money for used bikes seem futile. What happened to the brotherhood of man? *See a need fill a need* *Love your neighbor* *Help the poor* because alone we can do nothing. We need each other to be strong enough to survive.

Peace, be well.

Big Easy

Gotta love a six-year bump...

Whoa.