63rickert

I've been getting them for free. Old guys needing to move and wanting to get that bike in the basement to a good home. Also guys discovering that their rough condition old treasure is not worth much at all without a lot of cleanup and a lot of work. They talk to one whippersnapper who wants to make it a fixie or force a 135 hub in the rear forks and they would rather give it away. Have a '73 Colnago Super that way and yes it cleaned up nicely.

There are lots of classic bikes out there offered for sale for a song. If all you want is Bridgestone Paramount International yeah those hold value a little. Spread out a little and there are just lots of great bikes. There's a Tom Kellogg in local craigslist been for sale for two years for 400. Too small for me but in top condition and the seller is a reasonable person. But no one knows who Tom Kellogg is so the bike is basically unsaleable. Found a Charles Sabliere for a friend for 150. Charles who?

wrk101

+10 I am seeing early 2000s Ultegra STI bikes at ridiculously low prices recently, Basically where SORA bikes were selling 4 years ago. Prices are certainly down. Vintage components have held their value and have continued to go up in value (for the top of the line stuff). Mid level complete vintage bikes, say mid 1980s Japanese model with 600 series components no longer get much interest. I'm sadly in the process of parting out a couple of them right now.

Now top of the line vintage models continue to do well.

I see local sellers who think prices are as strong as they were four years ago. Their bikes continue to be relisted, some for well over a year already.

noglider 

Today, there are some very good buys in the "are you looking for one of these" thread.

Andy_K 

I bought a 2007 Fuji cyclocross bike with 105 STI (5600) and Ultegra derailleurs for $200 recently. I was looking for a cheap bike to keep on the east coast and thought vintage was going to be the way to go, but this was the best I could find. Obviously you can get a very nice vintage bike for $200 if you're patient, but if you've got a two or three day window your options are sometimes limited. And, honestly, for a beater bike this Fuji would have been tough to beat at that price point. My brother (not a bike guy) looked at it and asked, "What makes this bike so nice that it would be worth $200?"

BarryCW

I have a similar approach to Andy K in regards to what am I going to do with the latest old steel bike that seems to have magically appeared in my garage. In fact part of my joy is the torture I self impose as I debate period correct or old meets new. I love the ride that a steel bike with carbon wheels has as much as a buttery geared 12 speed on those beautiful old school tubulars.... all spindly looking. In fact truth be told my favourite bike always seems to be the one I have just dismounted. Anyway back to the thread, not wanting to be a spokesperson for NZ prices, there is a small groundswell of C&V enthusiasts who keep prices steady but seem reasonable for what you can get for your dollars these days. A good butted steel bike needing work can be got for $200 or even less, a collectable higher end bike around $400 to $600 that is ready to ride in near period correct guise, then of course anything Italian goes a bit mental which seems to be the universal way. NZ is well into a huge MTB boom and road bikes are not popular. ex Roadies are selling up I can go into a bike shop and have to hunt for a roadie for sale. Our local cycle club struggles for numbers as most seem to want to bounce up and down. Good time for us nutters to keep eyes open.

BarryCW

I have a similar approach to Andy K in regards to what am I going to do with the latest old steel bike that seems to have magically appeared in my garage. In fact part of my joy is the torture I self impose as I debate period correct or old meets new. I love the ride that a steel bike with carbon wheels has as much as a buttery geared 12 speed on those beautiful old school tubulars.... all spindly looking. In fact truth be told my favourite bike always seems to be the one I have just dismounted. Anyway back to the thread, not wanting to be a spokesperson for NZ prices, there is a small groundswell of C&V enthusiasts who keep prices steady but seem reasonable for what you can get for your dollars these days. A good butted steel bike needing work can be got for $200 or even less, a collectable higher end bike around $400 to $600 that is ready to ride in near period correct guise, then of course anything Italian goes a bit mental which seems to be the universal way. NZ is well into a huge MTB boom and road bikes are not popular. ex Roadies are selling up I can go into a bike shop and have to hunt for a roadie for sale. Our local cycle club struggles for numbers as most seem to want to bounce up and down. Good time for us nutters to keep eyes open.

gear64

I've been out of the market a while. When I bought my first bike it was nice going on Craigslist and finding someone elses 'junk' that I still still had an appreciation toward. Then it seemed like two or three flippers got a monopoly on anything decent. For the amount of money they were asking with little to no improvement, I could just save a little more and get something new. It's part nostalgia, part being frugal that drove my interest. Now it seems they are charging low end lbs prices for something you know nothing of the origin, and sometimes you can see stuff was repaired or even swapped out with junk parts.

rccardr 

Kilroy1988 

I just sold the 1950 Carlton Continental on Ebay to a collector in Ohio. After Ebay fees and shipping I'll come out with $100 profit, but I learned a whole lot about some old high-end British equipment and the Simplex Grand Prix derailleur set up, as well as the general quality of the Carlton frame. It was fun to ride around for a while, but was definitely too small for me.

I was getting nervous about making a sale before summer is over and I have a trip planned with my wife, because I've also noticed the trend of rather low prices lately. I don't mind breaking even on bikes, but just now I want a couple gone. Priorities!

-Gregory

jlaw

Agreed - and unlike many C&V folks I don't have multiple classic bikes - just the one 1985 Trek 410 that I bought and replaced all the components (except the seat post, seat, and headset) with more modern equipment (10 speed drive train with indexed DT shifters, Tektro brakes, 650b, etc.). I really like the feel of this bike - much more than my 'modern' CF Specialized Roubaix - and I don't have any major plans to replace it. But if I do I will simply remove all of the new equipment and re-install on the next project frame - that's half the fun!

Like Andy K, if I had to ride my Trek with its original components I wouldn't - no offense to all those who love their 'original' bikes.

Prices in my area (NE US) are such that there are plenty of options for good-condition, mid-range, vintage steel bikes in the $100 to $200 range - haven't noticed a significant price drop recently. Occasionally, a really special vintage bike shows up on CL for somewhat more - $400 to $600 - although these bikes sometimes go unsold.

Grand Bois

That's exactly what this boomer is doing.

El Chaba

This is my observation as well. The really nice stuff always holds its value. In addition to Campy, the nice French parts have been pretty solid.

francophile 

I'd been avoiding this one for a bit because I commented on one of the prior. Some comments in the above inspired me to chime in.

​​​
I agree with the ebb and flow part, but I've seen a definitive (downward) trend in my locale if looking back over a 5yr span:

• Bikes I was selling on CL 3-4 years ago are fetching 30% less and in taking 3x-4x longer to sell at that
• High-end components escalated in cost, especially cranksets, 40-50% in just the last 2ish years
• Lots of mid-high end complete bikes on eBay priced with 2014-15 numbers are sitting for months at a time without selling
• I'm seeing high-end stuff that would've sold in 2014 for $1500-$2500 sell for half that
• It doesn't seem limited to bikes, either ... electronics seem impacted also

tl;dr - it's been a buy'ers market for the better part of 18-24 months in my area and you really need to be savvy and connected to multiple apps to pounce quickly enough.
I think these are two are the most underrated comments in the thread. Now that you mention it, when the blue bikes popped up in ATL 3-4ish years ago, that's around the same time I noticed my rebuilds started selling for 30% less. Then, when the Lime and Bird scooters landed about 12 months ago, the market dumped again.
Nailed it. Longer to sell at a price which would've netted a quick sale a few years ago. Selling (CL in particular) has become such a burden with tire kickers and lowballers I had to stop listing. And this brings me to another point...

There are so many digital outlets to sell now that I think it's easier to list something for sale now, which has flooded the market and ...
Exactly. And like @abellanti mentioned above, most of my unique, rarer, hard to find, high-end stuff has come from sellers in the 60-80 year age range. They're moving in with family, into ALFs, or passing away. I suspect this is flooding the market, especially when the kids/relatives don't know what they're selling, they just want fast cash and for it to be gone.

I'm also seeing a lot more vintage bikes showing up at estate sales in the GA area. I was at one south of town a few weeks ago where the estate being sold belgoned to someone with a Scwhinn shop. by Nice Sannino for $400 and a virtually untouched Paramount Mixte for $800, no less than 100 NIB bikes, never even opened. Normally the org managing the estate sale has things too overpriced to make 5-10% on resale. I couldn't do anything with what they had, so I grabbed a few odds and ends and went on my way.

dweenk

I have had a difficult time selling anything in the last 18 months. I have had inquiries without follow-up, ridiculous low ball offers, and no-show buyers after agreeing on a price; this is excluding the scammers and wackos. I live in a university town, so I could always sell a few cheap derailleur bikes or single speeds to students in the fall and spring. One thing that happened recently was that a bike share program was initiated. It is a dock-less system called Spin Bike that requires a phone payment app. The customer keys in the bike number on their phone and they have a bike until they use the app to lock it. These things are found all over town now.

RiddleOfSteel

For me, especially selling anything--frame or complete--at the 63cm+ size range, the market for "builders" of a 63cm+ frameset is significantly smaller than the already small market for those looking for a 63cm+ complete bike in the first place. I usually have very appreciative buyers as I sell a bike at a good price. Any more, though, it better have STIs/Ergos or it's a tougher sell. I understand. I ebb and flow in my preference for riding down tube shifting bikes or STI bikes. I'm really liking my STI-equipped bikes, but tomorrow I'm taking one of my special ones to work and back, and it's 7-speed down tube shifting with non-vice-like single pivot brakes. I miss riding it, so there you go. Perhaps I should focus on building tourers as they file into the "capability" category, which is trending right now (wider tires, bike packing, gravel, adventure biking etc.).

As always, the high end stuff continues it's high or increasing pricing. Naturally the bargain hunters and savvy among us don't jump on those ones, but that's ok, I suppose. If anything, I don't have the room to add more, and the bikes I've got are 'winners,' so I'm curtailing the demand!

francophile 

Huh, found through the wacky thread, related to this one:

https://raleigh.craigslist.org/bik/d...654085535.html

Quote:

Are bikes still selling on Craigslist? - $1 (Durham) hide this posting

repechage

The rack-less bike rental programs I think will have an interesting trajectory. most of them have reasonably new equipment at present. Be very interesting to see how they manage equipment condition over time.
Santa Barbara California does not like the Lime scooters, they confiscated 100 of them in short order- litter, business license issues. They can sure clutter up sidewalks.
the "break things" business model will evolve into more formal staging of where to pick up and drop off. Just watch, just how long to sort out. And I do think that used bike values will take a hit for a while.

francophile 

Atlanta is in the same boat. They're starting to hold meetings about "how to manage this trend" and invoke safety practices and enforcement about where they can and cannot be ridden. We've already seen Bird starting to make adaptation with theirs. They'd been offering up a $20 bounty for "lost" scooter returns. When word got out about that in Atlanta, suddenly all of the scooters migrated to the poorest parts of town where they'd stay ... until someone collected a "found" bounty.

One of my coworkers lives next to a subsidized housing project and kept seeing 4 scooters pop up behind his condo, but looked for days unable to find them. One morning he looked UP for a change and noticed a pile of scooters tucked away on the 3rd floor balcony of someone's apartment. The resident collected them, held onto them for weeks, then was either directly turning in or having friends turn them in. Talked to the manager at the complex who was frank: This is how the kids are make money to pay for their rentals so they can get to school, grocery store, and other "normal" places they can't reach because they live in a single parent household with no car and a parent who's never home because they're working 3 jobs. .

Needless to say, Bird is supposedly updating that found scooter bounty. But I still see the damn things blocking the sidewalks, left laying around everywhere...

Bikerider007

Pretty recent here.

https://amp.azfamily.com/story/38510...dale-scrapyard

merziac

Nothing compared to China.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/20...cycles/556268/

Bikerider007

Sad, I've seen some of those pics with literally tens of thousands if not more bikes. They are getting as bad as plastic bags.

cs1

Bikerider007

And I responded several times. I was watching to see if others had similar thoughts. While having a beer

McBTC

When it becomes C&V versus just someone else's junk and given the nostalgia factor which could be priceless but considering that for some it also feels good to let 'stuff' go (including the box of posts, seats, tools, gears, bolts, washers and various doodads) and use the garage for parking the cars, all figure into how much an old bike is worth. Newer isn't always better but older probably is s***ier, no? Anyone care about an old Sony Walkman?

cs1