Dale wrote: I will remind you of the CR list rule which says you MUST state a firm price for items announced for sale on the CR list..... Let's correct this, Art, and never stray off the garden path again. :-)
Sorry, I missed that. For the record, I'm asking $750 and hoping to get the $650 I have in it back. The idea of a firm price is sort of foreign to me. I always ask a seller if their price is the best they can do and more often or not they come off a bit. It's a game, but I don't take this stuff very seriously. I don't know what this bike (or most bikes, for that matter are worth). I paid $225 for the bike. I bought the correct crank, chain ring, and Bayliss Wiley hub for around $400 from a west coast dealer. I couldn't find the parts I needed anywhere else so I paid what seemed like a premium. Building up the wheel and the campy parts ran me about $50. Again, unlike a lot of other collectibles, I have no price guide to refer to but just sort of use my common sense. I figured I wasn't over my head at $650, there'd be no shipping charges so I'd see what happens. The point of this explanation is perhaps to start a discussion that might shed some light on how we price bikes or how we determine what is a fair price when we buy one. I'm not into this hobby to feed my family, so I just try to break even or make a little extra. Obviously e-bay is one tool for measuring what a certain vintage bike will get. I'm curious how the seller of the Confente arrived at the reserve price. Is it based on what he paid for it? Is there some price guide one refers to? Intuition? Divine intervention? It seems that when I've attempted to talk about pricing on other forums or ask someone how much they have into a bike, it seems that to tell what one paid for a bike breaks some sort of code of silence. It's like if you talk about it, it decreases it's value. I sort of don't get it, but it's really hot here and it's not going to get any cooler anytime soon.
Art Smith