Just a personal example:

Early last year, I bought an early 80s Giant road bike from a local craigslist seller. Over the course of the next year, I upgraded just about everything, sold what was useful, and put about 1000 miles on it. Early this year, I bought a Surly LHT frame and moved most of the components to the LHT. I put the nearly stripped frame and fork (had a HS and stem as well) on CL and sold it for almost what I paid for the complete bike a year earlier. In all, I made about $40 from that bike (Frame/fork/HS/Stem for $80, brakes for $25, crank/rings for another $25). Do that with the Denali...

Chris