The big sales slowdown

[Once A Hero]

I tend to only sell stuff on here in response to wanted ads. Whilst I do list things for sale here, they tend to sell via other platforms when listed at the same time (and generally for slightly higher amounts ), so does make you wonder why retro parts buyers aren’t on a website called Retrobike!

Sales for lower end stuff has definitely slowed down. There’s a price level which I can’t see the point of listing things for as the reward seems to be outweighed by the effort of cleaning, listing, ‘negotiating’ and posting, so those parts can stay stored until needed.

 

[Tootyred]

I do wonder if its also been effected by age. For example, if you can remember, as a spotty 15 year old, having your face pressed up against the glass, looking at an early saracen mountainbike in 1983........your now 55!

Most of my mates stopped riding long before that and tbh, those who went through a three storey "crisis" did on in their early 40! (We had a lot if broken arms from skateboarding around then)...

So if your 40 and having crisis of youth, your going to be after the mountain bike from 2000.....sadly outside retrobikes main remit......and possibly why trying to sell 80s kit seems to becoming harder to do.

Im in the earlier bunch and getting rid of "stuff"..not buying it°....are we selling to a dwindling market of old broke people!?


° oh how i wish that was really true...

 

[clubby]

I do wonder if its also been effected by age. For example, if you can remember, as a spotty 15 year old, having your face pressed up against the glass, looking at an early saracen mountainbike in 1983........your now 55!

Most of my mates stoped riding long before that and tbh, those who went through a three storey "crisis" did on in their early 40! (We had a lot if broken arms from skateboarding around then)...

So if your 40 and having crisis of youth, your going to be after the mountain bike from 2000.....sadly outside retrobikes main remit......and possibly why trying to sell 80s kit seems to becoming harder to do.

Im in the earlier bunch and getting rid of "stuff"..not buying it°....are we selling to a dwindling market of old broke people!?


° oh how i wish that was really true...

I think there's a lot of truth in there.
Same thing is happening in classic cars. Things like 80's XR3i and Astra GTE are now going for silly money.

I still enjoy visiting here and looking at what others are riding and building but I've no real desire for any more retro bikes of my own.

 

[M-Power]

100% agree with Tootyred. Age and demographics have shifted to the next era. Also leccy bikes have taken over, people are too lazy to ride push bikes and many wfh now so there is less of a city commuter base. The latter imo is why so many city bikes shops and online retailers are going belly up. Really saddens me.

 

[mk one]

I see more and more younger collectors than before though, collecting for reasons other than nostalgia, same with classic cars, records etc. Of course there is the generation that lived through the era, their cravings will die away along with their other faculties, but as I say with the "you should be riding a new bike" arguments, a quality bike does not stop being good because someone builds another. I see the smaller cheaper parts fading away from popularity over time, but even those will be sought by some eventually.

 

[legrandefromage]

Gone are the heady days of 30, 40+ people turning up with their creaky bikes and creaky knees to Retrobike rides.

Herding cats around the Peaks or Thetford, etc the locals bemused by the garish (but faded) combo of fluorescence and greying hair

We all knew each other and could safely laugh and point at our burgeoning beer guts without fear of retribution.

Those memorable hunts back down the trails for important bits of bicycle / rider that had inadvertently fallen off

The scrummage and prodigious use of the retrobikers elbow as someone rocks up with a box of tat and you recognise that one important part that you'd been searching for for years

It was often joked that I'd be the last one here to turn off the lights, and sometimes I feel that that moment has already been and gone

 

[Quotama]

This site surely has to surely shift the age 'limit' for what is a retro bike and a modern bike every few years. 1997 --> 2001 right now in my opinion.

People always tend to build what they liked, or had around or wanted to build when they were the 25 years younger version of themselves. The early 2000s stuff is now definitely still relatively 'cheap', parts are easy to source and available and still fun to work on. Slowly this will draw in some younger retro modders, who in turn hopefully will be the grumpy old generation of forum guru's

The older the stuff gets it just gets progressively harder to have a 'fun little project'. So much time involved in finding parts, condition is often worse.

Just some thoughts from a much younger than average retro newby.

 

[Tootyred]

The site date I feel is set more due to innovation and style rather than actual calender concerns.

There were some big leaps and changes around 1997 that changed mountain bikes.

But the above point is taken.....modernise or die.....

But then where's the home for the grumpy old gits if that happens. I personally have absolutely no interest in 2000s bikes....i struggle past about 1992!

 

[clubby]

This site surely has to surely shift the age 'limit' for what is a retro bike and a modern bike every few years. 1997 --> 2001 right now in my opinion.

Ah, the ever returning request.

Ok first I’ll do the “official” line. John’s playground, John’s rules. As Tootyred says, 1997 makes sense. Yes, a you could argue a year or two either way but that’s the time the biggest shift from the early mtb's happened.

Second, I’ll do the real reason (bearing in mind I have no website building/programming knowledge). The post 98 forum has everything in it. If you want to find something it’s an easy search. To start splitting into decades now would mean every thread would individually need recategorised into where it fits in the new order, along with any links. It’s a huge (expensive) job. Alternatively, you could just archive the current 98* section and start again, which I don’t think anyone would want.

There’s also the fact that for John, the mods and the members, this place is a passion project and that passion is for the earlier stuff. All that said, personally I’d love to see a differentiation in the modern section as well, but realistically how many new views/posts would it really attract?

 

[greencat]

I wonder if there is a case for a new retro era:

Pre-1997 - classic retro bikes, largely dominated by rigid & steel etc
1998-2015(ish) - pre-modern geometry and explosion of standards in wheels/bottom brackets etc. Wider range of frame materials. Suspension - full or front mostly as standard.
2015+ - modern era.

as 1998+ now spans 25 years!

As for what's causing the drop off, probably all of the above. Core audience ageing out, cost of living, less time due to pandemic being over or other responsibilities (eg care of parents/kids)