Originally Posted by 3alarmer

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...the whole world of American custom frame builders is an interesting avenue to explore. Right now there's a thread in the valuations forum on a Wizard, which is not something you'd expect to discover on a local buy, but there it is. I probably have 15 or 20 of them out in the garage, all of which came up local to me on the CL ads, at one time in the past 20 years or so. And it is true that there are people just like me who are getting up there, age wise, who ride less now, and are going to be downsizing so their wife doesn't have to deal with the collection of bikes.

There is a list over on the CR pages of American custom frame builders which is a good place to start. The names on there, and your frame size, give you as much information as you need to winnow through the CL listings. But even there, they miss a few names. You can sort of tell these bikes are different from average by some of the frame details. And there are some that are less well regarded, because the builder did not turn out a lot of frames before he got a better paying career. Still, it's an interesting pastime, and many of them that get listed locally, like stuff by Bill Davidson, or maybe the FUSO frames, fly under the radar as a local listing in terms of price, because they don't have a lot of brand name recognition.

Both of my Davidson bikes sold here on CL for $600- $800. So based on my own experience here near the SF Bay Area, local shopping is your bes bet, but prepare to spend some time at it.