The "how to tell if a used bike is worth it" thread was closed and a link to a similar question was posted

Question

The linked-to question about a craigslist bike doesn't address the narrow question as asked. The question seemed to me to be directed towards valuing frames and components and comparing used bikes across brands and quality-levels. The linked question includes answers about how to avoid stolen bikes and how to sanity check a bike - stand-over, strange noises etc.

I wonder if we should rethink the closure or find a better already-answered question to link.

FWIW I don't think the asker had done enough leg work to be taken seriously but I do think the question has value that a) stands on its own and b) can benefit from current answers especially when discussing groupos across brands and other recent evolutions like 11 speed cassettes etc.

Answer 1

I think that insofar as it's different, it's different in a way that makes it a shopping question. The pricing answer is either "it's worth what you're willing to pay" or "a magic oracle says it's worth two fish and a turnip", and we can't give a generic factual answer either way.

While it's useful to have a vague idea of the second hand value, the new value plus looking at reviews is usually a better guide. Second hand sales are affected by so many factors that past sales are a poor guide. Pulling those apart to decide whether each sale was a stolen bike, a trashed bike, a bike with hidden damage or a desperate seller is usually impossible. Deciding instead to use a "blue book" is purely an argument from authority and invalid for all the usual reasons. Plus expressing an opinion about pricing is only meaningful when it's an observation of the interaction between a willing seller and willing buyer... exactly what the argument from authority is trying to avoid. Will the "blue book" people either buy or sell at the price they give? No. The end.

The trouble with "benefit from current answers about specific items" is that those answers will inevitably be local in both space and time. A second hand bike part is worth very different amounts in Taiwan and Qatar, for example, and in the year it's manufactured compared to 20 years after that. So they're not a good fit for this site.