Originally Posted by
Cougrrcj
True, but it puts things in perspective. I used to think people were crazy to spend over a grand on a new bike - now I see that it is just a sign of modern times/inflation. Likewise, it puts the C&V bike marketplace in a better light with respect to pricing. My Univegas were both bought for under $150 in the past two years. A new comparable bike today would be ten times that.
I'll stick with C&V deals, thankyouverymuch...
I don't fault you at all for buying C & V bikes, I've done that my self and have gotten a couple of good deals, problem with C & V is there are people who try to sell a bike that was considered "junk" when they were new and now they want more for it then the actual worth of the bike and that's scrap value! Not all stuff made back in the vintage days were good, I was alive and buying stuff back then and there were some real clunkers just as there are today. The big difference back then as I said before is you could buy a really nice handmade in the USA, Italy, England, Japan (yes I excluded France because I thought all their bikes were trash!) lugged steel bike with top of the line components for $800 or so depending on the year made, and with inflation if that were a marker for prices today you should be able to get a similar bike for $2,300's or so but you can't. The same thing is true with cars, but the biggest reason cars have followed a pace much higher than inflation is that fact that buyers of new cars are helping to the tune of $15,000 on each new car sold to pay for past and present employee benefits who built those cars because the unions falked us, and the car companies over big time by not letting the workers pay a fair percentage of those benefits, and they still don't today which only means that in 15 years or so that $15,000 could double. Some things bought today are actually selling for LESS than what inflation should have dictated, like TV's, my last "large" 32" picture tube TV cost me $620 in 1992, 3 or 4 years ago it blew and I got a 47 inch plasma for $430 instead of just over $1,000 as inflation would have suggested; the same with computers, my first computer, a 286 with 40mb of HD and 1mb of ram cost $3,200...well you know what computers cost today. Going back to cars some argue that all the electronics we put in cars is the reason for high prices, NOT, reread my last sentence about electronics, if anything electronics should have made a car cheaper because the cost of those items are very cheap to make.