...someone just listed a far from pristine, but promising, 1976 Motobecane Le Champion about 15 minutes away from me, for $280. It is missing the original brakes, and when dismantled today had installed in it an undersized bar (shimmed, but just barely) and a seatpost that was .2 mm too small. It did come with a salvageable Brooks Pro, and most of the other original components, except the brakes, for some strange reason. But I have all that stuff in the garage somewhere.

I will probably strip and paint it, because the paint is a little rough, and I always like the lilac ones. This one is silver. there is no chance in the world I'll eventually be able to sell it for what I will have into it, but I always wanted one, and this one seemed to be there with me in mind.

I realize not everyone is in the demographic of people who spend $280 for a project bike. But if you want the nicer ones, they're still showing up out of the dark corners of attics and garages.

Bloody enabler. (respect!)

Yeah, I junked my old van and now think, geeze maybe it was worth spending 2000 to put in new tranny? (I did find one advertised just like it for 1500) But well its long gone, Even have my brother looking in So Cal for one with decent mileage. Thought we had one but at his mechanics the guy told him it was leaking out every hose and seal it had, said a definite pass.
I wish I could drive a manual, but the old left knee isn't up to it. And finding something with less than 150000 miles for 5000 is all but impossible. Heck I see vans with 300000 for almost that now. Nope, rather do without that have a nickle and dimer (more like hundred and thousands now). LOL Starting to think a small Electric car might actually fit my bill. I've heard you can replace the battery with a newer one for better mileage. But I am in no hurry, I have my bike, I have bus service. And there is always the local taxi.

Those first gen Nissan Leafs (Leaves?), with their noticeably-reduced range, seem to be pretty cheap. One of my parents' recent cars was a newer Chevy Bolt. Granted, it's not $5k, but as a car enthusiast that likes his cylinders (but has more than recognized the good that EVs bring to the table), the 30-50 mph passing ability without needing to downshift is both revelatory and wonderful! Just push the pedal and move/hit the gap in traffic. Not a Saturn V rocket, but plenty sufficient (300 hp V6 grunt). I hate the lag and lurch of automatics in this particular traffic scenario (among others), so the Bolt was sublime in this regard. Fun little critter everywhere else. Electric noises are fun--it's like a very light version of straight-cut transmission gear whine in a race car...and a jet, all in one.

In Bikelandia, I'm on the hunt for certain hybrids that happen to have vintage touring bike geometry numbers (ok, Trek's FX pretty much exclusively), and that market fluctuates considerably. Drop bar conversion and all of a sudden, it's not just some random fitness/commuter/forgotten bike.

Oh, I know the difference between the asking price and the selling price. But when the seller goes into a great deal of detail about all the work they did to restore the bike to what might be better than new condition, they might as well put "No Lowball Offers or Time-Wasters, I Know What I've Got!!!" at the end of the ad. I'm sure this seller did good work, and maybe making a Varsity into a restoration project wasn't a bad idea, but getting the investment back is going to be harder because that's a bike that most people won't pay $100 for regardless of condition. Another poster said they saw more than a few Varsi-Conti's in far worse shape, like borderline scrap metal, with an asking price of close to $200. When I see something like that, it looks less like someone padding the price so everyone walks away happy after haggling and more like someone with an unrealistic idea of their item's true worth, and someone like that isn't going to want to haggle on the price.

TV shows like Antiques Roadshow and American (Nose) Pickers have everyone thinking that the contents of their attics and garages are a gold mine, and most of the time, that's simply not the case.

This might be the only comment in this thread that hasn't made me lose brain cells over the non-issue that generated this discussion in the first place.

-Kurt

Is there also a number for the used car, used jet ski, used boat, used kayak, used motorcycle, used house, used snowmobile price police.
Tim

On the other hand, the prices some people will offer these days is equally nutty (to me!!). My girlfriend just had a garage sale, and had an old, really really lousy adult tricycle she put out to sell. She didn't put prices on any of the stuff she was selling, it was a neighborhood garage sale that she decided to participate in last minute and she said I'll just toss a bunch of stuff on tables and in my driveway and see if I can make a few $ and clean out the garage/basement. I had looked up prices on those tricycles a few years ago and they seem to go for around $40-$50 in decent ride-able shape. (Sorry, can't remember the brand.) Hers had dinged paint (not too bad), hadn't been serviced in 10+ years, tires starting to dry rot, grips cracked. I told her to take the first $10 somebody offered her. Guy offered her $75 the first hour she was selling.

A few hours later... She's got 4 bikes hanging in the back of the garage, outside the sale area. Guy spots them, asks if they're for sale. 2 are her kids bikes from when they were about 10-15 years old (12-15 years ago), beginner mountain bikes, Treks. He says he's looking for bikes to keep in the garage for when his grandkids come into town. My girlfriend calls one of her daughters and asks her if she wants to sell her old bike. The daughter says she hasn't ridden it in forever so yeah, how much does the guy want to pay. Guy offers $100, sold!

Both those bikes are going to need a whole lot more than just pump up the tires and lube the chain and pedal away.

I believe there are a few, indeed:

Craigslist Price Police: 1-800-BLY-ACHE,
Facebook Marketplace Price Police: 1-855-BSY-BODY,
eBay Price Police: 1-888-GET-LIFE,
Yard Sale Price Police: 1-877-GRU-MBLE,
OfferUp Police: 1-844-NAG-FUSS,
Catchall line: 1-800-ART-FERN.

-Kurt

Bike Forums.
The place where you can learn about lubricants, metallurgy, classical physics and now the microeconomics of supply and demand.
what’s next? Quantum mechanics?

The Private Cyclist: Quantum Mechanics...For Cyclists

-Kurt

I’m hoping for thermodynamics.
Tim

:lol:
{voiceover} Tonight's episode: The Broken Promise
{title card} A Substantial Gift

I forgot about that. Makes me laugh every time.

Not to mention the special guest star. More like dead star.

-Kurt

You know what is going to happen..... Soon as things get back to normal and bikes are once more being mass produced and there is enough to go around plus extra. The prices will fall back to or nearly back to the prices were before. Simple supply and demand. Right now is a bad time to be a buyer and a great time to be a seller. Unless you want to pay the money, wait. Right now its the covid prices.

I'm constantly amazed by all the beat up worn out crap bikes that sellers are asking for significantly more $$$$ than my completely refurbished bikes. Absolutely nuts!

Since this has deviated - I work in the car industry and human nature is interesting and often VERY irrational. When the price of gas goes up $1/gallon people go nuts and sell their car that gets, for example, 20mpg and they think they need to buy a hybrid or electric car. Unless the purchaser drives A LOT the annual cost would increase a few hundred $$ but said purchaser is willing to take a financial bath in order to achieve those precious MPGs. I could write a doctoral thesis on this mentality but people are what they are so they can part with their $$ if it makes them feel better.

Bringing this back to bikes - a Varsity, et al, is never worth more than $100 to me. I paid a bit of $$ for my recently acquired Legnano but the components justify what I spent. Also, old Legnanos are cool so I feel fine with what I spent. BTW - if someone has one of those old crappy Campy Sport rear derailleurs (1013/3), PM me! ;)

This was how my grandpa, who made a very modest income while supporting his family in the rural Midwest (yet who loved to 'horse trade' cars often, for good deals), was able to buy a slab-sided ('61-69) Lincoln Continental sedan for a song during one of the gas crises. From Ford/Plymouth/AMC level to Lincoln, just because people needed the extra mileage, apparently. Now if only people suddenly didn't care about Pontiac G8 GXP 6-speeds and Chevy SS 6-speeds............

I did a bit of that when I first got out of the Army making very little money with a new wife and a baby I bought fixed and traded my way to better/more reliable cars. About 5 years ago I started teaching car maintenance and repair classes at the auto skill center on post the cheap junkers that young soldiers buy aren't cheap if you can't fix them yourself. The sad part of all of this to me is no one taught them this stuff before they headed off to adulthood, parents/schools don't need to be as extreme as my parents were but someone needs to teach these kids how to do basic maintenance and repair.

Our truck market is always nuts. After spending a year trying to find a manual pickup that wasn't beat, we found a new unicorn stick '19 Frontier in Puyallup. KBB/Edmunds now lists it's trade in at about what we paid back then..

I learned or was taught a little, but car enthusiasm (and an available driveway) enabled me to continue through college and past. The lack of a dedicated place to put a car (especially an inoperable one when repairing) can really hamper things, hence wrenching on bikes in an apartment. "Shop classes" (woodworking, metalworking, auto mechanics) have been a sadly dying breed in high schools across the country, for many (IMO unfortunate) reasons (which I won't go into), as are, likely, any "life skills" (finance etc) classes. My grandpa went back to cheap cars soon enough, so the Lincoln got sold to someone else when things were better.

And now we find ourselves starting the "back in the old days" comparisons. :lol: Glad you found something. Stick shifts in trucks beyond about 2006 are rare, though I would imagine much less so in the compact segment. I think Dodge was one of the last to offer a manual in the full-size segment, on their Cummins HDs no less. The car I bought over a year ago has not increased in value, even though it is quite nice. But hey, forgotten gems are special to those that find them and like them!

yeah, I just got my 72/3 Le Champion for $275, all original except the wheels and brake hoods. It didn’t take much to bring it back to mostly original, with a couple era appropriate upgrades (record hubs, seatpost, pedals)