El Chaba

While it is definitely now a buyer’s market, the demand and prices never drop for the really swanky stuff. A pre 1980 DeRosa in great shape, a Herse in any shape, NOS Campagnolo just to name a few categories never go anywhere but up in price….

georges1

That is true ebay.de has some nice things as well. Most of the good stuff I have bought in terms of frames and wheels came ebay.fr, ebay.it, ebay.co.uk and ebay.de. Before the covid I made some nice bargains with ebay.com but since two years price are on the rise.

repechage

a notable number of eBay.com auctions do not start low, but at a near minimum price the seller would want, a kind of reserve.
ofthen those attract only one bidder from my watched auction review.

others state high and the minimum price keeps dropping, a nicely repainted Colnago frame set started at $1,300 US and months later sold for $650. Probably the cost of the refinish.

georges1

depends also whatis the tubing of the colnago, I don't do ebay auctions, I prefer buy it now items. As for Colnagos as much as I like these bikes they are very overpriced and the finish of the welds on their aluminium frames left a lot to be desired ditto with their titanium frames where those were far from Cyfac or Daccordi level finish. Even Passoni is a much better frame than Colnago regarding finish for the quality and finish of titanium welds.

SirMike1983 

I agree this is a buyer's market in the past year or so. I've had a very good run in the past 18 months or so buying some higher end pre-1960 bikes. The couple bikes I've sold were a bit spottier - fair prices, but I'm lucky if I come out even. I was never in this hobby to make any money though...

The proliferation of ebikes has been very rapid here. I started noticing them maybe a year ago, and now it's like every 3rd bike is an ebike, in just that year of time. I was slogging up a hill (we have lots of those around here) a couple months ago and got passed rather briskly by an elderly couple who looked to be in their late 70s or early 80s on ebikes. It's a brave new world...

AdventureManCO 

Do you think so?

In the last Copake auction, a Sachs went for $1200 and a Herse went for $1320. I don’t have a lot of historical data on prices for the high end C&V market, but these prices seem lower than what I had become conditioned to believe. To me it is encouraging in that it means I may actually be able to pick one of these up one day.

I didn’t grow up with these bikes, and have no emotional connection to the nostalgia. I think they are beautiful and I like the ride. I love them, from a love developed and cultivated, not from a past history. But I do think I am an anomaly, at least certainly to the point of people like me not being able to overcome the sheer amount of bicycles that will become available as more collectors age out and people move to e-bikes and other factors.

malcala622

The notion that all schwinns are worth $1000+ hasn't fallen.

repechage

1972-73 Super, Columbus tubing.
aluminum? Only approaching vintage in age, not Classic.

I avoided Colnagos for decades. I own four now, three my size from 1968-1973.
entertaining bikes, good for 2 hours. All day?
something else.
‘the fourth one is a small bike that fits my wife.

repechage

Its a Paramount Fact, reality be dammed.

beech333

If only that were true. IAB pointed out a 1950's(?) DeRosa to me that sold for surprisingly low not all that long ago. I cannot seem to find the auction anymore.

repechage

a Masi Speciale Corsa caught my eye in an eBay.it auction.
started 2,600 euro, then was weird, bounced around same seller, 1,700 and 2,600 concurrently.
‘it has now settled in at 1,700 for the past 4 plus months.
a few years ago, this would have been Gone.

my size, would be nice to have, the wallet is closed. I think the ride and handling would be terrific.

El Chaba

The stuff in poor condition has dropped in price, but more than ever, condition is more important than ever. Everything in nice shape that I am interested in is as expensive as ever or more so. Then again, I am not trying to sell anything so I am only experiencing the market from one side. If I were selling, I would likely be lamenting the poor market.

repechage

but what of confirmed transaction prices?

merziac

Of course it has and will continue.

Could care less about supply or demand, never planned to make any money and don't care what I pay on this, not a loss, price of admission, every penny well spent if I get what I want or need.

There needs to be a separate forum for buying, selling, flipping, hand wringing, etc. IMO.

And I understand many here fund the hobby by doing so and are good at that aspect of it but if that's the the benchmark then be realistic, its not an exact science and you will not always make money or get it to pay for itself.

If $$$$$ are that important, learn the stock market, financial investing, etc.

Putting the $$$$$$ first sucks the fun right out of it for me and don't get me wrong, I love a good deal as much as anybody but I consider it a bonus that maybe helps a bit for ones that I spent dearly on, not a money making deal but a money saving deal.

Het Volk

It could be that millennials will get more into older or classic style steel frames and bikes, but the crowd seems mostly comprised of boomers and Gen-X.

nlerner

You mean the incessant bike flippers on my local CL will be clogging the listings even more?

merziac

Maybe?

bargainguy

At the beginning of the pandemic, bikes became the next toilet paper - unobtanium. Prices shot way up, even for low-end mass market bikes. Everybody wanted a bike, no one had one.

That was then. As people gradually came back to their pre-pandemic lifestyles, those pandemic bike purchases were then sold off, often at firesale prices.

That sell-off drove the rest of the market down to the point where suddenly, we had the reverse situation: Everybody has a bike, but nobody really wants to keep it anymore.

I don't think the C&V market will ever recover to pre-pandemic pricing as a whole. Certain components or groups may go up, but most everything seems to be down.

RiddleOfSteel

Market is soft right now for sure, but then again, it's always soft or slow for the really big frames I ride, so I suppose it's not really a change from there regardless of how good a frame/bike I am selling (531, hand-brazed, rarer, excellent condition, quality parts, etc). 2020 into 2021 in Seattle was an epic time to sell bikes and parts, and I sold a lot. Didn't make mad profit or anything, just got out of it what I had into it plus a buck or two. Happy camper.

The big themes I see, especially in vehicles, is, well, along with general inflation, has been the massively inflated asking prices in either decent or poor shape. Homes, too. The super expensive/collector stuff is basically sealed off in their high asking/transaction prices, so that's out of the picture. Delusional sellers, of which there seem to be considerably more of, continue to not help. Still, IMO, forces outside of bicycle availability are driving things, which manifests as a less-eager non-new/trending buyer pool. Gravel and ebikes have proven popular, though thankfully a number of C&V bikes (road and MTB) have the tire clearance, if not cool factor, to be adapted to that style for less money.

I vacillate between probably needing to drop my prices a little more and just keeping what doesn't sell until it does, riding it and enjoying it (not cutting the price in half just to get it gone). My financial premise is that I don't loose my shirt on what I sell--if I can more or less break even, which I've been able to do, then that's great. I get some green back and the buyer gets a really good bike--to say nothing of the therapeutic value of restoring and upgrading a bike, of composing its componentry and color, and of riding it and discovering its character.

I am presently relishing how well a "too small for me" 63cm '84 Nishiki Medalist frameset is responding to some really great wheels and tires (as an experiment) on what was otherwise a Clunker Challenge-level spare parts build-to-sell. $15! Bunch of surface rust through the paint and all over the chrome, plus a tiny ding in the NDS seat stay, hanging in the Bike Works warehouse during a sale of theirs earlier this year. Forget the market.

chain_whipped

Without trying to single out those examples, beware of some auction houses. Sales are final and no arbitration like ebay.

Additional buyer premiums too and of course sales tax collection. Copake buyer premiums are 20% at place of auction and any of their on line affiliated are 25% over hammer. Be prepared for cost of packaging and shipping.

repechage

Copake to my mind degraded their brand with behavior during the pandemic - terrible care for the goods prior to shipment.
tragic, avoidable, hubris.

USAZorro

They're even more pretentious than my old Hetchin's Magnum Opus was.

curbtender

You had some flippers jump in the game with limited mechanical skills. Buyers share their distrust of the used market and there you go. And bicycle blue book tells them these bikes have little value. One of the flipper ads that has been up over a year...

Schwinn Duo Sport tandem vintage road bike - $320 (sunnyvale)

‹image 1 of 10›
Where's his head At?

SurferRosa

Yeah, but in about 15 years, it'll be cyborgs, who are really into the elegance and simplicity of vintage steel. So it all comes around.

Piff 

A lot of my generation (millennials) seem to be content to scratch the Cromoly itch by riding neo-retro stuff (Surly, All City, Velo Orange, Wabi, etc.) for their actual riding bikes over getting into the whole vintage thing. I think it comes down to indexed shifting, brifters, 'Vertically Compliant, Laterally Stiff' marketing, disc brake marketing, cassettes/freehubs, The French, cartridge bearing components (perhaps an incorrect addition to the list since modern road bikes are sinfully complicated/tedious to setup)...And probably simple as never having had a chance to ride a well set-up high quality road bike with modern tires.

For those who lean C&V, I've noticed that Steel is more important than the existence of lugs, traditional tubing diameters, or a horizontal top tube. I also think some it comes down my generation not doing as much road riding, we grew up on mountain bikes or BMX bikes rather than bikes meant for the street. And that since we're younger we're still a bit unnecessarily competitive and may believe that one needs to own a modern style road bike to ride on the road at a 'performance level' (whatever that means...), or at the very least a bike that isn't 35+ years old. Thus, less interest in C&V where the vast majority of high quality bikes are road racing bikes.