Re: Re:
sylus":zbto8pta said:
I know we have to be more polite in the members sale section
And I will try to be , I can understand why you have covered up the prices on the invoices as inevitably they will be lower than what your asking for it, if they were higher you would have shown them
So.. As often we use sales as valuations for future bike sales reference points, can I ask... How did you come to a selling price of £3,000?
Fair question...so here are some data points...
- We did a lot of research here on Retrobike to see what prices looked like for King Kahuna frames in general.
- The general range for used frames alone was around £500 on the low end to £700 or so on the high end.
- It should be emphasized that those are prices for
used frames.
- We added an upward valuation due the fact that this is an essentially
new frame, never sold, and barely ridden.
- We added an upward valuation due to the fact that this was a new King Kahuna frame from a year that is relatively rare and hard to find, namely 1996...the first year the bike was available. I think you will agree, if you search around that finding 1996 King Kahunas at all, much less a new one, is not easy. There are not many around.
- We also considered that fact that the 1996 model year, apart from being rare in and of itself, is actually a very
unique year, as it was the ONLY year that the KK option included full 6/4 seatstays, and the Hei Hei's original round tubes, without the typical KK gussets.
- So, at this point, we have a new frame, from a hard-to-find year, and that year is itself unlike any other year for the same model. So that's just the frame alone.
- Next, we considered the fact that the bike has an all OEM Kona Kit, from the manufacturer, which is quite difficult to find. Another upward valuation.
- Next, consider the fact that the
complete bike, all OEM, has
never been sold, and is essentially unused.
- And finally, the fact that we can document the bike with the original dealer paperwork, with serial numbers that match the bottom bracket and the kit you see, gives the buyer a high degree of confidence that the rather unique, essentially new, and hard-to-find bike he/she is looking at, is in fact what it appears to be.
As a final comparison point, you can search here on Retrobike and see at least one other very nice, complete Kona Ti bike (I believe it was), with a mishmash of quite nice parts that are not OEM, that is used, and that lacks this unique year vintage and documentation, and it was also priced at £3000 for the complete bike -- again, that was for a used bike.
I don't profess to think that valuing a bike is a science, and there is of course some subjectivity and art involved. As I hope I have demonstrated, we did try to take a methodical, fair, and rational approach to pricing this very unique bike, and thus far, much of the commentary seems to agree that the bike is quite unlike many others you will see, and that the price is not unreasonable.
Thanks for the question.