Originally Posted by
HelpSingularity
I will just sit back and bide my time until my little collection of 70's and 80's double butted, lugged bikes and silver components become fashionable again and then who's gonna have the last laugh. Ha Ha Ha <evil laugh>
For the most part, people lust after what they couldn't afford when they were kids. Setting aside the vinyl-rules hipsters (who are already starting to move away from vinyl LPs and classic bikes and onto whatever will be cool next), the people who lusted after butted steel are retirement age or older and are beginning to sell off the classic butted-steel bikes they finally bought 10 or 15 years ago. Cheap, too.
For proof, there's the "Are you looking for one of these?" thread in the Classic & Vintage forum. Prices for classic butted-steel bikes are generally much lower than they were five years ago. Comparatively few of those bikes would have been bought on impulse during the COVID lockdown, so the downtick in their prices doesn't represent situational volatility.