Hi Folks-

I need some input/braistorming power.

I work at a community bike shop (www.velocipedebikeproject.org) and I'm trying to produce a short guide that will help staff members price bikes that get donated to us. One factor that will help someone who doesn't have extensive bike knowledge is to know the quality of the components. I'm trying to put together a table (actually 2, for MTB and Road) that will give basic info about relative quality of components. I'm not especially knowledgeable on this stuff myself, so most of this is gleaned from various places on the internet (including these forums). I'd appreciate any feedback you can offer about the accuracy of the draft versions below. First a few points to note:

- Most of the bikes that get donated to us are at least 10 years old, so we have a lot of bikes with discontinued/old components and few bikes with newer high end components, which makes it complicated and somewhat subjective to make comparisons of all of them.

- These lists aren't meant to be comprehensive lists or relevant to a current consumer. They're meant to be useful to our staff. So, for example, I don't include SRAM road components (which we never see) but I do include Shimano Lark (which we have a surprising number of), and Falcon gets its own column, because we get a lot of dept. store bikes.

- Let me know what widespread components (particularly from the Bike-Boom era) are missing from these charts.

- Low end is a big category. It doesn't meant the bike is junk. It just signals that the components are nothing special (which is the case with the majority of the bikes donated to us) and other factors should be used to price the bike.

- I can't figure out how to post a table, so there is a less readable list format

-Thanks for any help you can offer:

Mountain Bike Components

SHIMANO

High End
XTR, XT,

Mid Range
Deore, STX, Deore LX, Alivio, 400, 500, Exage

Low End
Acera, Tourney


SRAM

High end
X-0, X-9

Mid Range
X-7

Low End
SX-5, SX-4, 3.0


FALCON
Always low end



Road Bike Components

SHIMANO

High End
Dura-Ace, Ultegra, 600

Mid Range
105, STX, Tiagra

Low End
Sora, Exage, RX, RSX, 300, 200, Lark, Eagle, Positron


SUNTOUR

High End
Superbe, XC Comp/Pro/Sport, 9000

Mid Range
VGT, VT, Cyclone, Sprint, BL (Blue Line), 7000, 5000, 4000, 3000

Low End
AR, ARX, Alpine, Seven, Mighty Click


CAMPAGNOLO

High End
Record, Chorus

Mid Range
Centaur, Veloce

Low End
Mirage, Xenon


FALCON
Always Low End

well, hmmm. A good idea, but you have maybe oversimplified. There is a brand called Falcon, for instance, that originated in England. They built both low-end and very high-end bikes...So you cannot just write off a Falcon as a POS. And, my guess is that just about any level of Campy is going to generate some collector interest and so you shouldnt write off anything in that category. But you are probably on the right track.

You really need to spend some time training some "estimators" that can front for the rest of the mechanics. And I can speak for the group here: we will be happy to help getcha in the ballpark, just about any time.