"I recently purchased a Sekai Royal 1000 from my wife's uncle. It's been stored for the past umpteen years and is in GREAT shape. There is only a little surface rust spotting through, which should clean up pretty easy. The stickers are perfect, not peeling or bubbling. And there are only a few small nicks in the paint.


It ends up that I am too short for the frame, so I am debating on replacing the tires, cleaning it up and selling it, but I'm not sure what it's worth. Will it be worth putting money into, or should I sell it as is? Any help would be greatly appreciated."

Is it worth putting money into if the plan is to sell it? NO.

Bikes worth refurbishing tend to be higher end than this one, and take someone with the time/tools/space/skill to do all the work themselves. Even with the pile of stuff I have, if you gave that bike to me for free, I would end up at breakeven by the time I was done (and my 4 to 6 hours of labor would have to be free). Better to clean it up, air the tires up and sell as is.

For this reason, I have stopped flipping the lower end vintage bikes. I donated at least 50 of them to our local co-op in 2017. There the economics are better! Every part they put on the bike is free (donated), labor is free (volunteers including me) and they tend to not dive in as deep on the rehab.

If you look at the Sekai 4000 Professional I posted about a page ago, first, it was the top of the line model with no rust. I got the frame at a very attractive price. In addition, I got all of the parts I needed to build it out of my bins of spares. So from a what I spent out of pocket, I had the cost of cables, housings (buy both of them in bulk), chain, bar tape. Less than $10, plus my time, plus what I paid for the frame. Still, financially, just reselling the frameset would have been the best move. The individual parts I used on the build, while they were in my parts bin, could be sold individually for about $350, including Sugino Super Maxy crankset, Campy Record wheels and Belt leather saddle.