Well, for a college campus or a beach house or commuting through rundown neighborhoods I'd consider buying a bike that would likely last a couple of years and be particularly attractive to no one.

Different needs, different bikes.

I own 5 bikes made before 1991, I consider them high quality, have decades of good use left in them. But even though someone might drop $3K to buy a bike with the same qualities from Rivendell, I suspect I could sell these bikes for less than five hundred dollars each. It's assumed a "new" bike has some intrinsic value that greatly exceeds that of the essentially the same bike that's 30 years older. This is rather bizarre thinking to me, and has been said before it seems like people equate bikes and with cars; they are nothing but trouble after several years of service.