Yet Another Rant Against The Craigslist Seller

I am a pretty devoted bicycle rider, what you would call a roadie because I ride a racing style road bike as opposed to a mountain bike or comfort bike. So I am here to offer some advice and yes, to rant once again about craigslist sellers. And yet again, I am taking aim at the Portland craigslist as I am in the Portland metro area.

People, I am certain that many of you are now familiar with Lance Armstrong and maybe you looked into your garage and noticed you have an old bike that sorta, kinda looks like the style that Lance rides. Now this may be true, a road bike has the thin tires and curved, dropped handlebars and even the older road bikes look very similar to current models but guess what? Yes, over the years everything from the tires, wheels and components have been drastically improved and changed, so a 10 or 20 year old bike cannot be compared to a newer model for the sake of placing a resale price on it.

For example, older road bikes typically have a different, slightly larger sized wheel and tire. The headsets have changed from threaded to threadless. Shifters have, for the most part gone from downtube and suicide style to being located on the brake assembly and even the brakes themselves are of a different size. This is not to say that an older road bike is not worthless, I myself still ride a 20 year old Nishiki that I use as a trainer and on days when the weather is rotten or when I want to run some errands and don't want to have to worry about locking my $2000 Lemond outside of a store.

But over and over again I see people posting a 20 year old bike for sale for hundreds of dollars more than it is worth and when you talk to these people to try and make an offer they stand firm. Either they have truly convinced themselves that the bike is this valuable or they try to convince you that it is a "classic" or collectors item. People, there are not many brands of bicycles that retain there value and most of the bikes I see on craigslist were department store brands or low end models of major brands. Another reason why older bikes won't retain their value is the facts I mentioned about, components have changed so if a part breaks or wears down on an older bike it can sometimes be very expensive to try to upgrade it to the newer components or wheels. For example, a decent wheelset without the tires often times cost more than the price of an old road bike.

All I am saying people is that you need to live in the now and face reality. And don't take my word for it, you can go online and verify that what I have said about older road bikes versus newer ones is true. Sell, but be reasonable. And don't try to convince me that your old Huffy is a classic and worth $300.