Originally Posted by
Tape2012
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.
The difference to cars is that the LBS only sell a small fraction of the market and have no motivation to report all transactions, or be accurate about those. Just look at this forum how many people report about purchases or sales on CL/ebay or ask advice about CL for sales. I can't recall a single thread about someone asking about an LBS used bike sale.
For cars the government has 100% of the sales recorded (due to titles) and in states with sales tax there also is a huge motivation to enforce honest transaction prices.
Bicycles also have no odometer, while mileage on cars is an important part of the price.
I think the only thing in common between KBB and BBB is that two words match.