[Closed] Bike retail prices in the 90s

Bloody expensive, things are probably cheaper now than ever like-for-like. It's stuff like carbon wheels and frames that make it seem the other way. Just my opinion of course.

In the late 80s low end stuff was £299 pretty much. “Can’t buy a proper mountain bike for under £300” was pretty much the mantra back then.

My first bike was a 1991 GT Timberline, it was £300. That was about the asking price for just nudging into "proper MTB" territory; then you went up to about £1000 for the top end of normal production hardtails, and then there was a bit of a jump to the titanium and US-built frames.

£300 in 1991 is about £650 now accounting for inflation.

Can you get a reasonable rigid mountain bike for £650?

My Cannondale F500 cost £950 in 1995.
Mid level alu frame with Rockshox Indy forks, Shimano STX groupset and own brand brakes.
Guess that’s the same as buying a Deore level bike with Sektors or similar nowadays.

Sometimes with discounts.you can pick up a 90s mtb for 100 pounds though

Back then bikes did not come with discs, working suspension and decent components. Sure, they had more gears, but they were crap.

So its interesting to ponder if we are getting better value now than we did back then.

My top of the range Orange Elite in 1990 would be pants in terms of how it rides compared to an equivalent HT now.

“Can you get a reasonable rigid mountain bike for £650?“

You can get a Voodoo Bizango with hydraulic discs and sus forks for that much. So yes!

A circa 1990 Marin Muirwoods which from memory had Shimano Exage Trail on it was about £320 I think.

Dad had never heard of Marin, so I got a Raleigh Mirage for Christmas instead, also Exage Trail (with a U-brake)

according to this

MTB-KATALOGE.DE "https://www.mtb-kataloge.de/Bikekataloge/PDF/Marin/1992.pdf"

a pine mountain was 1,980 German Marks in 1992 - that was about £660.Pine Mountain was mid/high in the Marin Range.

for comparison - 1991 saracen pricelist

I'm pretty sure my Hardrock Ultra 96 was £500. Its still in my garage with all the original parts. One day i'll get around to doing something with it

You also have to remember that you seldom have to pay RRP now whereas in the early 90s it was LBS or nothing.

Sure, they had more gears, but they were crap.

Providing you went Shimano and from Hyperglide on the performance still stacks up as the components have changed very little. Extremely durable too as there's plenty of 30+ year old groupsets still going strong. Plenty of the older parts were crap by today's standards but I'd argue the gears aren't one of them. For arguments sake I'm talking 93 era LX/DX/XT or 92 XTR on.

You also have to remember that you seldom have to pay RRP now whereas in the early 90s it was LBS or nothing.

Or wait for the end of season sales. There were a couple of mail order shops that did some hefty discounts.

Extremely durable too as there’s plenty of 30+ year old groupsets still going strong. Plenty of the older parts were crap by today’s standards but I’d argue the gears aren’t one of them. For arguments sake I’m talking 93 era LX/DX/XT or 92 XTR on.

Yeah, that last bit's important. If your bits said "Shimano" and "Deore", or "Suntour" and "XC", then you were into durable territory (especially XC Comp/Pro). But the non-Deore Shimano stuff, IME (anything up to 500LX) had a heck of a penchant for falling apart. I think it was once Exage started to emerge that there seemed to be more of a trickle-down of durability.

Good point

As for the 92 Marins you'd have been looking at around the following from memory:

Bolinas Ridge- £279.
Muirwoods- £340.
Palisades- £399.
Bear Valley- £450.
Eldridge- £550.
Pine Mountain- £650.
Team Marin- £800.
Team Issue- £1000.
Team Titanium- £££££££

If I can dig out an old MBUK I could confirm.

When did mail order become common in the magazines? I remember I started using them around 98 but were there a lot in the early to mid 90s?

Orange 1993 prices: .html

£619 for a rigid Clockwork with LX. £1270 adjusted for inflation today.

Think I paid about the £700 mark in late 1996 for my C16-R with STX-RC.

were there a lot in the early to mid 90s?

Yeah. I've still got a couple of old catalogues and price lists in the loft, I forget what year. But there was certainly a lot in 1992 when I spent many an evening pondering what my second bike should be 🙂

I have a bolinas ridge.thanks.

You also have to remember that you seldom have to pay RRP now whereas in the early 90s it was LBS or nothing.

Nah. I always remember looking in the latest MBUK for the adverts for components. For a time, Woolley Hat Shop reliably had ads in the back of MBUK each month offering XTR group sets with a huge chunk off. You had to ring up with your (Mum's) credit card if you wanted to order anything.

EDIT: That would have been around 1997.

My 1997 GT Talera was £300. As above, it was about the cheapest 'proper' bike you could buy. I used to play around spec'ing my dream bike (hardtail) and it would come to £3k or so.

You had to ring up with your (Mum’s) credit card if you wanted to order anything.

Either that or put a cheque in the post with the order form cut out of the mag 🙂

I don't remember the magazine ads being significantly cheaper than the LBS until all those grey market Marzocchi forks suddenly became available at half RRP. But then I was very loyal to my LBS so I probably wasn't paying that much attention.

Thanks all. Who says memory gets worst with age..haha

Late 80's I bought a Chas Roberts White Spider frame for £450.00, maybe another hundred for headset ,Bb, chain etc and swapped the rest off my old rockhopper. Still have the frame canny decide what to do with it

(with a U-brake)

Or a "U-don't brake", as I referred to the one on my Raleigh Montage.

Cantis can be swopped directly with v brakes.

1996 RockShox Judy SL (most expensive fork from RockShox in 1996) RRP £599
According to the Bank of England inflation calculator £599 in 1996 is £1,132.87 (in 2019)

2020 RockShox Lyrik Ultimate (most expensive single crown fork from RockShox in 2020) RRP £929

I'm not sure that comparing a hardtail (or even fully rigid) with canti brakes to a full suspension bike with disc brakes and a dropper post is very representative.

Mid 90’s: Trek 820 rigid at £300 Rrp from LBS With Shimano Alivio group, adjusted for inflation you get much better today all round.

Late 90’s: Last seasons US made GT Zaskar with Last seasons XT / LX & grey import Marzocchi Bombers for under £1000 from one of the mag mail order co’s. Can’t beat that today on one year of paper round savings + xmas bonus! Don’t even know what the equivalent USA hand made frame would be these days?

Brakes, wheels and high end forks all much better today. Pikes Vs Judy hmmm.

Makes me think of wanting a Klein back then but could never afford as a kid...

Orange Clockwork rigid in '93 with (I think) Deore LX was RRP 700 but with student discount I think got ten percent off.

I bought my Claud butler Cape Wrath (entry level HT) in about 1998, RST front suspension, cable disk brakes, alloy hardtail frame. I remember lusting over a Klein Attitude Comp in the shop which I couldn't quite afford, which was $1200 RRP so probably around £1000-1200 which my memory seems to think is about right, I think my bike was £600-700.

£600 in 1998 is about £1000 now, and you can buy a good HT for that, or even a FS bike.

£1200 is only £2100 now which buys you a good mid/high level hardtail, so I'd say things are about the same, or better now.

You can pick up a beginner mtb for about 300 hundred now when discounted

Proper retro Klein's cost a fortune now

But the non-Deore Shimano stuff, IME (anything up to 500LX) had a heck of a penchant for falling apart. I think it was once Exage started to emerge that there seemed to be more of a trickle-down of durability.

Any different to the cheaper Sram of today? The various threads on here suggest not!

Exage was a name used way back but I guess you mean the 1993 version? That was the year the trickle down from the original M900 XTR started and the next gen LX made the more expensive DX (which wasn't overhauled to the same level that year, or ever as it goes!) obsolete as it was so good.

Proper retro Klein’s cost a fortune now

Or any of the low volume early 90's stuff tbh. Check out how much the New York built Fat Chance Yo Eddy's go for now. Wasn't that long ago you could pick one up for £6/700.

I remember my first MTB which was a kids Peugeot with 24” wheels (alloy rims!) and 3x5 non-indexed gearing in 1988 was £180. And then in maybe 1992 a chromo Muddy Fox with 3x7 RapidFire (which fell apart after a few years and was replaced by GripShifts) was £240.

My Dad was always very frugal so none of it was anywhere close to high end!

That all Saracen Competition Hydrotech up their was £1250, now calculated at £2889.   It has Marzocchi's, XT and Tioga.

Similar to this Ariel: https://www.saracen.co.uk/bike/ariel-elite at £3299.    Add in the disks & dropper you're not far off albeit immensley more capable.

https://bikepedia.com/Quickbike/Bikes.aspx

Good site, seems US based but gives prices back to 93 in US dollars.

A Yeti Lawwill 6 frame was £3,000 in 1997, that number was emblazoned on my soul as a teenager as the gold standard for a properly expensive MTB.

That's £5,500 in today's money for an alloy frame.

My three,by memory.Orange Clockwork DX £600,Orange Prestige Suntour £700 and 1993 Cannondale M800 Beast of the East £800.

Oh for the days when you could just walk in and buy these things.

Just remembered that my 98 Marin Mount Vision which had xt groupset and Manitou X-Vert R forks (free upgrade) was £1550 from Wheelies.

Mail-order wise, Merlin and Woolly Hat shop were my go to for magazine and telephone ordering along with chain reaction.

I'm sure my 1996 GT LTS3 was £1200.....with original cantis immediately swapped out for Maguras which are still going strong to this day

My first mtb in 1992 was an MBK Adventure cost £213, the bug bit hard! In December 96' I spent £3350 on a Santa Cruz Tazmon (with a 10% discount and downgrading to XT from the XTR I wanted, to try and keep cost down!) that's £6330 in todays money, it wasn't top end everything. High end bikes are now (relatively) priced similarly to then, I think.

From memory I bought a 6 month old Raleigh Montana from my mate for £150, he bought it for £250 in 1992. It had a seat like a grifter, above bar thumb shifter gears, the most rigid of rigid forks and a steel frame so thick and heavy that Mount Doom in Mordor would struggle to melt it down.

After serving an early apprenticeship on the old railway lines and bridleways around Gateshead it joined the Navy and ended up getting me around Faslane base and the surrounding hills. It was terrible off road and remained planted to the back roads. Gear changes were available every second shift in the month and it had more indexing carried out than a library.

Happy days.

Bought a Kona Explosif frame in '97 that cost £500 and the Pace forks that I got at the same time were £400.

My Kona Fire Mountain was £450 in 1992. It was rubbish by today's standards. It had a a cromo main triangle and HTS stays IIRC. Rigid and cantis, of course, and weighed 28lbs or so. But the hubs were poorly sealed C&C, the headset was notchy after a few rides, the rear mech (STX) was floppy as hell after a year or so (I only had it two years) and the freehub packed up twice.

I think my first Kids MTB was an MBK (motobecane?), then a 24" diamondback, then things went backwards and I had my dads Raleigh Maveric followed by a saracen BSO in about 2001 which still cost £200 and I really did ride it into the ground!

Then I discovered actual mountain biking with stuff that actually worked!

My Orange P7 in 1996 with LX, Cantis and rigid fork was £800

I bought a Team Marin rigid in March 1994. It was £1095. I vividly recall riding to work on it one day when a colleague, stood puffing on one of her 20 a day, said
'How much was that then, looks expensive.'
'£1100'
'Bloody hell, that's a lot'
'It is, how many fags a day do you smoke Gill ?'
'20'
'Well, in 12 months, I'll still have my bike and still be pretty fit, you'll have spunked £1000 on fags and all you'll have is smelly hair and clothes and black lungs'

Lol

I spent all of first freelance payment on a KHS Montana with full XT group set for £850 from Bigfoot bikes in Gloucester at the very start of the 90s. Great bike, lasted ages, eventually snapped the frame. A big step up from the Raleighs I was hooning around on before.

GT Arrowhead was £300 in 1997 IIRC. Specialized Rockhopper, the mid-market benchmark for hardtails was about £600 IIRC; and the Stumpjumper, in M2 and then M4 flavour (never found out what happened to the M3) was a scarcely believable £1000. Crazy money - showed that the whole MTB market had gone mad!

MY Peugeot Barracuda cost £300, think that was 1990/91. Pretty sure it had Deore Lx rapidfire gears. Remember wanting an Alpinestars Cro-mega but my mum didn't have enough cash for those lovely elevated stays. I still bring it up over Christmas lunch as an example of neglect.

Halfords has similarly capable looking rigid bikes with V brakes from less than £200, if you were looking for mid range deore level bikes, reckon you'd find something for £300-350, so about 50% of the cost of my Peugeot when inflation adjusted. And for not much more you could have hydro discs and working suspension.

I saw a cromo alpinestar on ebay the other day.love the look of them and I think they are very good.the alloy versions all snapped at the chain stay.

My first bike a Ridgeback 602x was 250 quid back in 1988 (was reduced being the 87 model from 300)
Bought a Proflex Beast 96 model for 1649 with xt v brakes rather than magura hs11's
Then a Giant Mcm990 1997 reduced from 3000 to 1700 full xt,carbon full sus with Judy sl and Super Deluxe Shock.

@supernova those khs montanas where a lovely bike, mate had one. knacked it when he tried to drill a snapped seat post out of it 🙁

I remember my 1990 Marin Muirwoods with the Zolatone paint and bright green forks/stem/bars and Shimano 200GS groupset was £320... I remember thinking how low the granny gear was, a 28T chainring and a largest 28T cog on the back giving a 1:1 ratio... How times have changed!

My 1995 Marin Eldridge Grade was £720 from memory, and with its 8spd Shimano LX groupset and White Industries (OEM cheapo made by Sugino I think) cranks etc. and the (at the time) faintly ridiculous 22/28 granny gear! I ended up upgrading that bike quite heavily, got a Manitou Magnum suspension fork for it (£280 iirc) as I couldn't stretch to the Manitou 4. Put some Club Roost riser bars on it too, with a brace, an enormous 620mm wide (up from 560mm flats with bar ends on!), Flite Ti saddle, softer brake blocks, some expensive folding Conti tyres etc...

Then, perhaps stupidly, I fell for the lure of full suspension, a mate having had both a Proflex and a Cannondale Super V already at the time. I was an impressionable youth and had saved up my entire wages from working all summer, and just before I went back for my A Levels I took my Eldridge Grade along with me to PX against an Orange X1 Pro, complete with Shimano XT Groupset (Gripshift SRT800 shifters aside) and a Pace MXD suspension fork with a whopping 75mm of travel! I think it was £1800 cash price with those upgrades at the time... I did ride that bike pretty much everywhere though to be fair!

I paid £500 for my 92 Eldridge Grade (3x7 XT drivetrain and shirts, DX brakes and hubs) in an end of season sale. My 99 Mount Vision (full 3x9 XT, Manitou SX Ti fork) was £1999 - a 40th birthday present.

I got a KHS Montana Comp when the bike shop I worked in as a Saturday lad started selling them. Lovely things but my god they were squirrely. If you stomped down on the pedals you could get the frame to flex enough to drop the chain into the small ring, bear in mind I was about 8st dripping wet in 1994.
As for pricing I was mostly paid in parts, the Manitou's on my bike worked out at about three months worth of Saturdays. If I needed cash it was a tenner out of the till at the end of the day.

I had a 2000 Kona cindercone as my first mountain bike after I go in to buy my brother (he had a 1995/6 diamondbacks WCF), I paid £700 for it which because it was full retail they chucked in a set of rob warrer pedals in as well.

https://www.bicyclebluebook.com/value-guide/product/46277/

Still have it in the family, dads pub bike

I think my Marin Bear Valley SE (Rigid forks, Cromo, STX RC, V Brakes) Was about £640 in 1998. Took me a year to save up for that.
Bossnut of it's day was the B-17, £999 IIRC - 6" front and Rear (Hi5s on the front) but V Brakes I think.
Seems to remember the Mount Vision was about £1600 or so for the entry level one, Pro was quite a bit more, possibly 2kish?
I think my Hope C2s were about £150/end, the Bulb Hubs were similar prices to Pro4s nowadays.

Chain reaction were getting going that time, Big ads in a lot of the papers and the stuff was definitely cheaper than my LBS (Even though I worked there - the staff discount was NOT generous...)

My Kona Cindercone in 1989 was £349

I remember my 1990 Marin Muirwoods with the Zolatone paint and bright green forks/stem/bars and Shimano 200GS groupset was £320…

That was a 1991. The 90 was full neon yellow, no Zolatone, unlike the rest of the range.

I'm a nerd.

Marin Nail Trail 1993, £900 (2020 = £1600)

Marin Nail Trail 7 2017, £1600

(Although I paid £950)

That's not a 93 Nail Trail, it's a 1994 or 5.

Now I'm really nerding myself out.

😆

I think I demo-ed that model Nail Trail.

Very fast and light but I hated the stiffness and got a Team Marin instead.

We had many happy years together.

In 1997, I bought a Specialized Rockhopper hardtail with Rockshox fork and A1 frame for £750

My 753 framed Raleigh Team Panasonic cost £1500 in 1985 (I didn't buy one back then)

Thanks everyone.only thought I would get a few replies

That was a 1991. The 90 was full neon yellow, no Zolatone, unlike the rest of the range.

I’m a nerd.

You are probably right actually... Got it in July 1990, so it's certainly possible it was a 91 model bike when they had just come out.

That’s not a 93 Nail Trail, it’s a 1994 or 5.

Now I’m really nerding myself out.

That's a 1994 for sure... The 95 Nail Trail didn't have any purple on it, it was all plain silver polished alloy. 👍🏻

and the Stumpjumper, in M2 and then M4 flavour (never found out what happened to the M3) was a scarcely believable £1000.

Yep, I got a Stumpjumper, after my Rockhopper got knicked. House insurance paid the £750 in full, and the lock came with $250 insurance, which I also claimed.

Strangely, I remember the Stumpy having a rigid fork, but a quick search says no

My Orange C16 with rigid forms and STX RC groupset cost me £600 in 1995 from wild side cycles in Tunbridge Wells.

In 1993 my Univega Alpina with Acera gears was £360 new.

Marin were so big in the early/mid 90s. I bought a Palisades Trail in 92, I can still remember the excitement. And I was 29.

Paid £375 in 1987 for my Marin Bear Valley. Had to borrow £50 from my boy friend at the time or get the lower speced model. 33 years and 2 kids later and we are still hitting the trails together. Never did get round to paying it back 😉

iirc I paid something like £400/£500 for my first mtb in the early nineties, a Trek 850. God I loved that bike, fully ridged, canti rim brakes, single walled rims (that were quickly replace after a few dings) with Paneracer smoke/dart 1.95s, plastic toe clips, 3x9  alivio.

25 years on I guess this is about £900 in modern money, which is about what my old cube acid cost a couple of years ago which got me back into biking,  recon fork, disc brakes, 3x10 deore / XT,

so I guess allowing for inflation and bike development an entry level type bike then was about the same as an entry level bike now?

Think I paid £600 for my Orange C16-R in 1996. Had 21 speed STX-RC, canti brakes. Loved it.

1990 Marin Palisades Trail here. £300 ish from Walton Street Cycles in Oxford.

Best paint job ever.

Great thread, took me back to my first decent mountain bike.

1995 Marin Indian Fire Trail (rigid) - £1050. I've still got the receipt, catalogue and official price list... 🙂 In fact, I've still got the bars knocking about in the garage somewhere.