Indyguy

Does anyone use or trust the values the Bicyclebluebook.com provides?
I don't have enough knowledge to value a bike myself, wondering if Bicyclebluebook.com is a reliable reference so I don't over pay... at least not get ripped off

Thanks!

GlennR

You can use it as a high water mark. But condition matters, how bad you want it and how bad the seller wants to sell it.

dedhed

The only thing that matters is your local market.

johnnyace 

I deal mostly in C&V bikes, and bicycle bluebook only seems to go back so far, so it is of little value to me.

jefnvk

Anything old, run of the mill, and in rideable shape as-is around me seemingly goes for mid $100s, from 70's Raleighs to 00s hybrids. Anything newer is priced more off component cost than model. The few times I've bothered looking at BBB, it didn't have much correlation to my reality.

Or, to point out some issues more directly, look at something like this. Supposedly the only difference between a pristine, like-new mid-90s Rockhopper and one needing a complete overhaul is $19: https://www.bicyclebluebook.com/Sear...41&model=43230

FWIW, I'm not getting either a pristine, nor a complete overhaul needed, for $48 on CL. Thrift shop maybe, but bikes are pretty generically priced there.

mstateglfr 

Bicycle Blue Book is the worst thing to happen to the used bike market since...well since ever. Its totally utterly worthless.
The pricing is totally arbitrary as it doesnt take location, current competition, or quality into account...which are 3 of the most important components of deciding a bike's value.

If you have a nice bike in a sea of nice bikes, the price will be different than if yours is the only nice one around.
If your area has high demand and low volume, pricing will be totally different than if you have high volume and low demand.

Oh- I forgot to mention size. If you are in the sticks and have a 48cm road bike, it might take some time and sell for less compared to if you are in a city.


Bicyclebluebook is hilariously useless. It serves no purpose for me when buying used bikes or selling refurbished used bikes.

Maelochs

BBB provides one datum, usually lowball, and distorted as noted above. It is a useful referent, as a low-end number as a rule, but cannot be relied upon itself. Always check local listings ... bikes in bike-rich environments might sell for BBB numbers, but in the middle of Oklahoma, people have maybe never even seen a bicycle, only heard about them. Prices will vary.

SkyDog75

Pricing for bicycles varies WIDELY from locale to locale, among other factors. For example, bikes in my semi-rural part of upstate NY often sell for less than half of what they would in NYC. Unless a price guide takes important factors like location into account, it's not going to be remotely accurate.

We've got a few people on these forums who freely offer advice, though, some of it even good advice. ;-) If you give your location (we don't want your address -- just basically which Craigslist local site applies to you) and the type of bike you're looking for, you'll almost certainly get some good suggestions.

There are also some good sites with general info you can use to identify the quality level of a bike. If vintage road bikes are your thing, for example, check out @randyjawa 's site My Ten Speeds.

corrado33

I like BBB because it tells me the original MSRP of the bike (most of the time.) From there I can use the condition of the bike to figure out how much it would likely sell for in my area today.

Thing is, it's hard. People who are looking for "a bike to ride" and aren't looking for a capable road or mountain bike aren't going to spend $400 on a bike. They'll spend $250, max. It doesn't matter if that hybrid cost $1000 initially. It's going to be a hard sell at $500 or $600. Mainly because the "well off" person who went shopping for a $1000 hybrid in the first place isn't going to be shopping at the used bike shop I work at, and anybody who DOES shop there is either looking for a cheap bike (less than $200) or looking to score a good deal on a more expensive purpose built (road or mountain) bike.

Modern mountain bikes I've found tend to "hold their value" better than most other bikes (at least here in bozeman). Mainly because when someone goes shopping for a decent mountain bike they're immediately faced with $1000+ price tags and at that point a year old bike for $500-600 looks good. However, older mountain bikes, regardless of quality, just really aren't worth... anything. Unless they're something special of course (super old Fat Chance bikes mainly.) Any mass produced mountain bike from the 90s is worth $250, max. Even that's pushing it. The technology has just changed so much that it's not worth buying an old mountain bike (if you want to actually mountain bike) when new mountain bikes are SO much better. (Mainly new forks.) There was someone on my local craigslist selling an old gary fisher (and not one of the cool old gary fishers.) For $1300. I sent him an e-mail, laughed in his face, told him he was a disgrace for flooding craigslist with that ridiculous ad. Admittedly the bike was in "like new" condition, but still, it wasn't a museum bike, it was a mass produced 90s gary fisher that people sell for $300 on ebay. Old mountain bikes are really only useful for commuters now, or gravel bikes, and I almost universally recommend staying away from old suspension forks. Exceptions to the rule of course, but for the normal person, yeah.

Road bikes, on the other hand, have not changed a hugely significant amount since the 90s (or earlier). Sure, we've gotten lighter, and we have more gears now, but a modern road bike still "looks" like an old road bike, albeit with slightly wonky tube cross sections. I can ride a top of the line 80s-90s road bike just as successfully as I can ride a new road bike today. I'd even argue that my top of the line early 90s landshark is a hell of a lot nicer than most bikes under $1500 today. (But I prefer good steel to aluminum.) Because of this (and because of hipsters buying old road bikes), old road bikes tend to hold their value better than old mountain bikes. Top of the line 90s road bikes can still be bought for $300-$500 (or more). Sought after steel framesets can still be purchased for hundreds of dollars alone. Road bikes at our shop range from ~$175 (old steel lower end schwinns) to $300-$500 dollars, depending on quality, condition, and age. Yes, that 175 seems high, but remember we're not craigslist. We have overhead and we get these bikes into 100% good working condition. Those 5 hours you spent with that $100 schwinn you bought off of craigslist adds up really quickly when you have to pay someone to do the work. We also replace the wear items. Brake pads, bar tape, etc.

zebede

Bike Blue Book, unlike Kelly Blue Book, is not based upon market values. Kelly Blue Book has MILLIONS of data points from used car sales, loan values, insured value. There is an industry which is built on the data (banks and insurance) and it is updated daily.

Bike Blue Book has ZERO data points and is basically a genius way of generating clicks so they can make money from ads. As pointed out above it is just an overly simple formula that has no source of data.

As a used bike market participant, I concur with the above observations that the values in the Bike Bluebook are not the value seen in the marketplace. Its strictly click bait. The owners of the sight could care less if the values are real or not. They want to appear as legitimate as possible to keep the clickers coming back.

There is no mechanism for them to receive data from the marketplace, they are making the stuff up!

jitenshajin

I just searched the Bike Blue Book for "Dawes". There were only two hits.They don't even list it as a brand. What excuse for a database is this meant to be.