How did we go from the $1000 vintage bike to the $2000 vintage bike in such a short period of time. The Peter Weigle thread got me thinking about this. If the bike is an exotic Italian or has some cycling provenance, boom its $2000 or more. Seems like just a few years ago a lot of these bikes were $1000 bikes. Has the vintage thing really taken off more than I realize? I run into a lot of cyclists when I ride, but seems like I am the only one running vintage.

I'm using ebay as a reference. Maybe these $2000 aren't really selling and its just sellers throwing out a hook to see if anyone bites. And prices in general on ebay are way up. Maybe Its time to take advantage of the spike in prices and unload some of my odds and ends.

Thoughts???

Simply put and only in my opinion, the rapid increase in price is a product of supply(limited and decreasing) + demand(unlimited and increasing) and pure BS(people sit around and BS about how much this or that old bike is worth).

Those three factors, two of which are based on fact, will cause the selling price to increase. The third factor - BS - will also impact the prices, for a while, but will eventually settle down. Sadly, by the time the BS has done its work, I will no longer be able to afford a vintage road bicycle.

Does that make a lick of sense?

Oh - make no mistake about it - the bikes are selling, and I base that comment on fact, my own personal experienced fact, also.

My thought is that people have seen that restored or well preserved C&V bikes will sell, many times for a good price, and have begun to run with them as a way of making a few dollars, for the good or the bad of the hobby/life style. Bad for the C&V people like everyone here since, for a while at least, the prices are going up. Like everything being sold there are bikes worth a good price and deserve preserving and there are some that are pretty close to being a scam on using the C&V theme. This is just my take on the rise in prices since I began following the genre in 2008 after 17 years away from road bikes. I am sure more experienced and smarter people will explain what is going on better than my ramblings.

Edit: Randy's post came I while I was typing, he is someone I respect about this.
Bill

Increased popularity due to forums like this. We're the ones driving up the prices.

I think people like Jan Heine have made the prices increase due to their online popularity.
He has a big fan base that takes his word as gospel and they try to build bikes to his preconceived ideas of what bikes should be like.
When you get people all around the world who want to ride a bike like Jans and these bikes or pieces come up for sale the auctions can go wild.

Personally, I am still surprised how reasonable most nice vintage bikes are. I grew up collecting antiques, and the originals often cost 5 to 10X their modern equivalent (knockoffs if you will). But look at the re-creation bikes being sold now (I am thinking in particular of the mixte and townie styles). A lot of them cost 5X what someone can buy a pristine original for. The originals certainly have a limited supply vs the new re-creations. Weird.

I caulk it up to uninformed buyers, and some people just want it NOW (and cost is not so important to me).

As far as the modern re-creations being made of better materials, lighter weight, etc., the same could be said of classic cars vs reproductions.

I have a self imposed limit on any one bike, no more than what an entry level LBS road bike sells for. Right now, that figure is about $800. I am astounded at what has been available under that mark, usually, way under that mark.

Sure there are the occasional rare models, where buyers get auction fever. But those are the exceptions.

A couple of years ago, we did have a bubble on SS conversions of POS vintage bikes. Hipsters were paying silly prices for them. Around here, that is now over.

It has a lot to do with increased access as well. I still go to auctions on occasion, and I constantly see folks using their smartphones to research bikes. Now the internet info isn't always right, and it doesn't tell a flipper how to assess a frame or components for damage, but this has forced the prices at auctions upwards and made decent bikes less likely to sit at thrifts (and they used to just sit, 10-15 years back). Most of the flippers want top dollar once they see something similar for big bucks. Hence, prices are forced upwards.

For a prime example of internet mis information and ridiculous pricing info, click here for amusing insights on Huffy Aerowinds. There's a lot of horse hockey like this out there.

In general, the question is if this is a bubble or not. I've noticed some leveling of prices in the last year, but I've also seen an increasing number of riders. Some of them will be interested in vintage bikes in time. I suspect our once cheap hobby may grow (even) more expensive over the next few years. Many of us built impressive collections on the cheap over the years, and I think this will slowly become harder and harder to do.

And then there guys like this, who I think are artificially influencing prices on parts.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/NOS-Regina-O...item416ed0155c

Of course, they are his parts and he can ask what he wants for them, but when prospective sellers use ebay searches as a way to determine what their part might be worth, the higher end of the scale can influence folks into believing their part might be worth this much. I think it's bad for the community. Good for capitalism, though, I suppose.

Plus it's an increasingly global market out there. In some areas of the US and the world, the economy is doing pretty well. Enough so that there are buyers out there with the discretionary cash to purchase luxury goods.

Even so, many of the people I sell to compare a refurbished original or retro-mod to what they can buy for the same price in an LBS. You'll get a much nicer $800-1200 bike from me than from a store.

I'm still trying to figure out how we got from $100 to $200 for the better C&V bikes.

Via the very machine we are using to communicate with each other, we are reaching a market and a generation who believes that what someone, someplace, on Ebay, Craigslist, Kijiji et al will pay becomes the established value.

I have been in the British sportscar hobby for years and on-line sales have driven the prices up at even local sportscar flea markets. A big surprise last year was at a thrift shop that had a ratty discolored camera lens @ $200. The person at the counter said they "just go on line" to establish an asking price! They seemed to have no concept that condition affects price.

Ha, it is more like $400 here in Toronto. If you have a budget of $400, you are going to find nothing worthwhile, maybe an old Bianchi from Japan. Unfortunately, the best value in C&V bikes here is now in the $800 range.

Using my built-in-the-cage-in-Chicago '71 Paramount as an example, there was a window of time when these bikes were made. They are desirable bikes to guys like me, and they'll never make those again; not in America, not like that. I didn't pay $2000 for it, but I did purchase it on ebay, and I did pay a lot more than I would have ever imagined that I would pay for an old bike on ebay. In fact, the bike had a very high starting bid (it only took one bid to buy it in the end), and I just couldn't bring myself to bid on it for several days because of the price.

An employee of mine in the bike shop, a young guy who's not really into vintage bikes but who does have a certain wisdom beyond his years, talked to me about it. He knew I wanted it very badly, and he also saw that I was having a problem with the idea of paying that much for a forty year old bike on ebay. In the end, he simply said, "you know, we're getting further and further away from 1971."

That did it. I bid within the next few minutes.

I blame Bush....but seriously, I think that the popularity of shows like American Pickers has something to do with it.

Everyone wants to find that hidden gem...conversely, everyone thinks that their bike is a hidden gem!

Absolutely! And word has got out that theres money in old bikes, people hereabouts are asking $300.00 for POS no name bikes that cost $75.00 new, so the perception is that if poor quality bikes fetch that much then the sky's the limit on good ones.

Let's not forget the influence of shows like American Pickers which makes C&V and antique bicycles more visible to the general populace.

I have only watched a couple of episodes of American Pickers and there was no mention of bicycles at all, this show is known for finding valuable old bikes? Are there any Youtube clips you guys would recommend?

A lot of sellers (including me) have wised up, bikes that I might have sold for $150 four years ago, I might sell for $250 or more. The difference IMHO is not so much the market has gone up, its more that my knowledge of the market has gone up. I used to sell bikes too cheap.

The internet has made access to values, both as a seller and buyer, much easier to determine. Yes, I know the internet was around five years ago. Maybe I was just stupid....

!!! That made my day.

Anyway, there is simply no place to park our money that gives us even a moderate return these days. So collectibles of all kinds are going through the roof, as people look for something to invest in to make a return. Whether it's art, vintage cars, bikes, old guitars, old beer cans, or thimbles, they are all through the roof compared to only a few years ago and will likely continue climbing as this economy remains stagnant.

So get used to it, as there is zero chance of this economy ever going back to the good ol days. The new "norm" is upon us....

I think prices have gone up also due to the fact that u can't get anything decent for under $1000 at a local bike shop. Even though a solid vintage road bike may be 250 and up. It still is cheaper than the nice entry level road bike for 1000

I'm not seeing the prices being up, like others here. I'm seeing vintage stuff selling for less these days. Of course you do get the occasional foreign bidder who bids large, but I've seen sales down about 25%. If you look at recent sales of Eddy Merckx MX Leader frames, they are cheaper than what they were selling for a year ago - although they are still quite valuable. As for the $2000 bike, I feel like most of those are either show quality or fromer pro models. A buyer searching for a "new" quality steel bike will have to spend much more than $2000 to get out riding.

I have two comments.

1) in my opinion the prices of campagnolo have gone down compared to 2006/7 highs. I bought in at the time and you could not get a nuovo record rear derailleur for under $80 or a front for under $40.. well you could but it took a lot of time and patience. Maybe prices tanked again in 2008 and have been slowly recovering since. I did a big sell off in early 2008 when prices were still decent. I also paid $100 for a used super record rear mech in 2008, because I wanted one in better condition than the perfectly functional one I had, no way I would do it now!

2) The prices of suntour and vintage japanese have gone way up. In 2006 I bough a nishiki Comp II on ebay for about $300 shipped with cyclone, super mighty, gran compe, cinelli etc... not a chance I would get it that cheep now. Back then, no one was paying good money for vintage japanese. I had to sell a black 1st gen dura-ace/crane derailleur and shifter set in excellent condition for $40. No body wanted it. Yet I could sell a beat up campy front derailleur for the same price.

frames might be a different story.

On a recent episode Frank and Mike buy a highly desirable Lionel train set. They bought it for $8000. Later in the show they sell it at a toy train auction. It only brings $3500. Thats the fickle world of collectibles and collectors.

I think we are starting to see some of that now with vintage bikes. The $2000 Paramount or the $3500 Cinelli may not hold their value and at some point really loose value. An acquaintance of mine says the balloon tire bikes have really sunk in value. And as we the "Bike Boom" generation age the demand for these bikes will fall, as will the prices.

All that said, I have very little interest in high end bikes. But I do find the price of somewhat common parts inching higher and higher. The "donor" bike is my staple. Harvesting parts from a whole bike seems to make more sense than buying individual parts.

Well, I'm trying as hard as I can to promote certain C&V bikes, and if this raises the value, then I suffer that, too.
Of course, a Cinelli SC can be bought now, new, for roughly $3500, so sometimes, the values of the older bikes mystifies me.

I agree with big chainring, the market buyer is aging out of being able to ride, therefore buy, and therefore sell.....

That's the common perception, but I've gotten a pretty good return over the last few years.