Originally Posted by
zebede
Bike Blue Book, unlike Kelly Blue Book, is not based upon market values. Kelly Blue Book has MILLIONS of data points from used car sales, loan values, insured value. There is an industry which is built on the data (banks and insurance) and it is updated daily.
Bike Blue Book has ZERO data points and is basically a genius way of generating clicks so they can make money from ads. As pointed out above it is just an overly simple formula that has no source of data.
As a used bike market participant, I concur with the above observations that the values in the Bike Bluebook are not the value seen in the marketplace. Its strictly click bait. The owners of the sight could care less if the values are real or not. They want to appear as legitimate as possible to keep the clickers coming back.
There is no mechanism for them to receive data from the marketplace, they are making the stuff up!
My understanding is that BBB has relationships with bike shops/stores who report their sales data. Do you have any evidence for your claims?
Also, the auto market is much larger, more fluid and easier to track so you would expect their data to be more accurate.
All I can tell you is that, in my experience, insurance companies use BBB data in making decisions on bike values. You might not agree, but they do.