skyblue

A friend would like to buy my 1983 Raleigh USA Prestige Gran Sport. It's sort of an odd duck, so there's not much in the way of comparables at completed E-Bay auctions. Thus, my appeal to your collective expertise to help me name a reasonable price.

It is a built-in-Japan Huffy Raleigh. 1983 was the first year of Huffy's marketing experiment to contract with Asian builders and sell Raleigh-branded models in bike shops. The Prestige GS was the best off-the-rack "Huffleigh" that you could buy that year. (You can see a poetic marketing description of the bike on page 8 of this catalog.)

The bike was in fairly pristine condition when I found it a few years back. I replaced some crumbling brake-hoods and the bar tape. The metallic-grey paint in is fine shape except for a 1/8" chip on the top tube that reveals a fully chromed frame under the paint. No rust.

The only weak aesthetic element: most all the decals are fragile/flaky--it doesn't look like the frame got a final clear-coat over the decals.

• Raleigh USA 555SL mystery tubing
• Suntour dropouts
• Built in Japan--S/N 3ES0115
• Suntour Superbe dérailleurs and shifters
• Superbe hubs laced to 700c Araya aero rims
• Aerox Cranks
• Aero Gran Comp brake set
• Ideal seat and SR Laprade post

You can find more pictures than you probably want to see on my Flickr pages. Thanks for any help you can send my way.

skyblue

Bump.

Where would you set the price if you were selling bike?

Many thanks for any of your fine estimates.

reducedfatoreo

That's quite purty. Too bad that catalog doesn't have the original MSRP...you could set a benchmark off of that. What'd you pay for it + put into it?

stonefree

I would never sell anything that nice, I don't care if it's a Huffleigh, not even to a friend. You must really need the money, or you're running out of space to keep it, or there's just something wrong with me. The teeth on the gear aren't even worn.

wrk101

Tip to searching ebay: Don't look for comparable Raleighs, look for comparable Japanese built bikes with Superbe components. There should be plenty of them. The Raleigh will not bring as much as some top tier Japanese brands, but should bring close to most of them.

Add 25% to any estimate for condition, well done!

RNDM

That thing is way too clean!

skyblue

Many thanks for the compliments on the bike and helpful advice.

Don't really want to sell the bike; it's just the all too common story: 20 bikes in the basement, and I've come to realize that I don't have a good enough reason to hoard them all to myself.

This one deserves more attention than its getting from me, and as I was sizing-up my friend for a bike he saw this one hanging in corner and the right sort of gleam came into his eye. I think that it will be finding a good home.

gohmdoree

What did you end up selling this for?

So pristine!