What the...?!

[Slingshot Dude]

What is going on? is it just me or did schwinn stingray values just skyrocket? i mean look at this bike!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCHWINN-5-SPEED ... 43a9381c51

it needs new seat cover, grips, tires, crome, maybee even rims(if they are bent) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what is happening?

i know that is an earlier stingray but man alive! :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[Slingshot Dude]

dont laugh too hard when i ask this lol! but does anyone else think the seat looks like a mummy :shock: ? LOL :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

 

[FunkyStickman]

Don't be surprised, it's been going on in the car world for generations. People think just because it's old that it's worth lots of money. Sadly, they forget what it costs to restore it... that's assuming it wasn't junk to start with!

 

[Elmer]

I was a starving antiques dealer for two years. I still warn people: Dirt is old, but you have to pay someone to haul it. True value is a combination of age, rarity, condition, condition, condition and provenance. (If it can be proven it was JFK's Stingray it would be worth a fortune!) A fairly new factor is nostalgia. It started with the baby boomers. Mom or grandma had these dishes, so I want them.
They had some money, later in their lives, so they drove the prices up, trying to recapture their lost youth. I think that is the case with these ugly little impractical bikes. “Oh, I had one when I was a kid!” One can pay inflated prices to get the perfect Stingray, but they are still going to be a balding old man with an over-priced bike. And when the market corrects, as it always does, they better hope they sold at a profit. All this said, people are still going to try to buy back their youth.

 

[snydur]

i never understood why (if it has no reserve) it gets such a high price. if everyone was smart (ish) the would wait for the last day and bid on it by dollars not hundreds.

 

[MadMick]

Sometimes rarety can have the opposite effect to what you'd imagine. The power of an old thing to generate high prices can also be influenced by there being enough of them around to create a fan base. The Raleigh Chopper never was a rare bike (they made 1,275,000 of them if I recall) and the Austin Mini car, the VW Bug were made in huge numbers and now, as a result of having featured in so many people's lives, have a huge following which keeps prices bouyant.

 

[Scruffy49]

Pretty typical. I've turned down $5K, cash for my Super Beetle.Even if I wanted to sell it, I couldn't in clear conscience cornhole some dummy that bad. It's just a dusty old car, but... Same year I am, it is orange (like my custom motorcycle), has a bunch of aftermarket stuff ... so it should be worth more to me, but... it doesn't run very well, the brakes are junk, unfinished interior (part stock, part aftermarket), sunroof leaks like mad, and it has a standard beetle (1968) base model engine (2330 twin carb was swapped out by my father in law, he got ripped off)...

There's a sucker born every minute.I can remember buying and selling old skip tooth bikes 20+ years ago for $5-20 in rider condition. A nice one would fetch $40-50.

You guys can blame us who are just hitting 40 for some of the ridiculous prices. Banana seat bikes were all the rage and now a bunch of us think we are "old".