[Closed] HOW MUCH ? !!!!

I'm guessing you're in the 'older' generation? perhaps you've not heard of inflation? got to explain some of it.

You can buy excellent kit at lower prices though. Example - Genesis Core 26.2 at £699 is mentally good.

All goods in any market exist at various quality levels.

You don't have to spend heaps if you don't want to.

Patience is the key as bargains come up quite frequently. It's taken me a year to build my 29er but I have saved about £600.

I do take your point though, seems to have gone through the roof of late.

is it cheaper if your younger ?

its happened to every leisure pass time accross the board mate. nothing unique to cycling at all.
i have a few hobbies and all have seen huge price rises for equipment.
its a case of making the most out of peoples obsessions i guess.
no ethics, but good business!

Didn't you get the e-mail?

Mountain biking has gone, along with the rest of cycling, middle class.

That basically means that the people who do it can be sold any amount of tat at exorbitant prices because they are [i]buying into the dream[/i].

It's not about the doing, it's about the being seen to be about to do.

never missed a pint to buy bling!!

is it cheaper if your younger ?

it was expensive back then in 1991 for top gear same today BUT the md price stuff is so good light and durable it is the best buy

Yes, but why buy new when you can buy cheaply second-hand off those who do 😆

Depends how you look at it i mean the slx groupset is fantastic for the money and carbon frames for £250... Some manufacturers are silly prices but then part of the cost is the name. Some of cube, canyon rose bikes etc are great bits of kit for the money

some good points. maybe its just that theres so much more choice 'nowadays' ?

2 or 3 tyres in a year?! Well blow me.

Have you noticed that other goods have raised in price too?

Thing is though, we're back where we were 15 years ago in terms of capability/bang for buck.

Canny buying is the key. In the last 5-6 years I don't think I've spent more than £25 on a pair of tyres for instance. I just avoid the 'latest thing' and keep an eye out for those who MUST have it selling off bits for peanuts.
My current main bike, a C456, has cost me under £1300. The wheels and forks alone would be £900 absolute minimum at full price. Most of it I bought new but the used bits are impossible to spot.

Having a nice bike for cheap can be done if you have patience and a bit of skill.

But yeah, there are some utter loons paying £50 for a tyre and £130 for flat pedals!

EDIT
The wheels and forks above cost me about £470, all brand spanking new apart from the rear hub:
150mm 15mm Maxle Revelation RLTs
DT Swiss 240s hubs DT DB spokes, Mavic 717s
The rear hub alone is what? £230+ RRP?

when I first picked up a halfords catalogue wayy back in '97 an XTR mech was £127 IIRC.

I might have completely made that up but it certainly rings a bell, anyone got RRP's going back that far?

I don't think bike's have gotten much more expensive over the years, certainly not much over inflation, but there has been a boom in higher end bikes. 5 years ago almost all bikes were alloy, now you open MBR and get bombarded with carbon £5k bikes, but if you can live with the same bikes we were buying 5 years ago then they're still as good as they always were.

A giant trance X5 is probably a big step up from a giant VT2 for almost precisely the same money, the X4 is probably a big step up again in spec for the same cost adjusted for inflation. If you want the X1 it's there, but it's not necessary.

It's not really all that more expensive. I seem to recall paying 250 quid for a set of Rock Shox Quadras way back in the early 90's which a random internet inflation calculator tells me is 400 quid in today's money. These days you can get a set of forks for 200 quid ( http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=70299 ) that I imagine[0] work way better, in as much as they'll work in winter for a start 🙂

Same goes for my first decent bike: 500 quid for a rockhopper in 1990 which is about a grand in today's money. You can get a nice bike for that that's pretty much the equivalent sort of thing.

More recently, 40 quid for an X7 rear mech in 2005 from chainreaction, still 40 quid now.

So yes, in absolute terms it's more expensive but not in real terms.

[0] I say imagine only as I've never tried the marzocchis in question but as I still have the Quadras the Marzocchis would need to be terrible to be worse.

or maybe its that prices are going up whilst my earnings are going down ?

and £130 for flat pedals!

My name is spoon and I have a pedal fetish.

It all started in 2004 with a set of V8's, but I quickly went astray and bought some time atacs. Then in 2008 I was tempted by some Burgtech Penthouse Flat MK2's for £150 and have ridden them ever since. Then last year I decided to try these thin pedals everyone was going on about, especially as they're now half the weight of the burgtechs. So I bought some octane1 flats, they were shit. So I thought about some on-one thinny's, then they sold out in 5 minutes. So I spent a few weeks sulking before buying some Da-Bomb Bare Bones pedals for £80 which appear to be the same pedals, but with even more material drilled out, haven't tried them yet, and I suspect I'm going to be disappointed compared to the burgtechs, the lesson is probably that £160 pedals are worth it!

Inflation has obviously played a part, but we got absolutely done over when things kicked off in 2008 as the pound sank against the Yen and the Dollar. Have Shimano prices been affected by the tsunami in Japan last year does anyone know?

What the international shop up here says.
Back in the day if you wanted a rocky moutain switch frame it would cost you 1500 Frs (that is around 2300 € or back in the same days 1500 of your british currency).
Now 2300 € buy you :
A brand nex commencal meta 55 (1800 €)
A brand new scott spark team (1999€)
A brand new kona tanuki deluxe.

So a lot more than what you could have in 2002.
A fox flux helmet is 84€, is you get a short it's 79€ with a 3D padding, a jersey is 39€ (both from FOX) and a pair of glove 25€.

So I am not sure we're having a worst deal than what we had last century.

if you've convinced yourself that you need a santa-cruz/orange/specialized/trek, then yes, mountain bikes can get expensive.

mostly, i guess, to help pay for the advertising/sponsorship.

if you think you'll probably be just as happy on a rose/canyon/vitus there are some real bargains to be had.

i'd love a specialized carbon camber (29er - obviously), but i haven't got £3000.

so i'll probably get a Rose Dr Z. i bet they're ace.

choice, it's great.

there's so much good stuff at the sensible end of the market, that the brands we're comfortable are almost forced to pitch their stuff at the 'aspirational' end of the scale.

the lesson is probably that £160 pedals are worth it!

Nahh. Not even close. It's all in your mind. There's no reason thinner pedals should cost much more. I've got some v8s which have had a right battering, but if they broke I'd just put on the wellgo v8 copies I have hanging around in a drawer. And there would be no difference at all.

It's all in your mind! 😉

the real bargains are to be had in the (slightly) older kit. i mean, has technology really sent yesterdays top bikes to the dump? no!

ive got a superlight and a slayer. both packed with xtr-hope etc and the pair owe me less than a grand. both my bikes are better than i am so spending more would be silly.
if your not making your living by riding, whats the point in having the most expensive stuff anyway?
i know the answer to the last question btw 🙂

Completely agree with buying 'sensible' kit. It's interesting, there does seem to be an influx of 5 and 6k bikes of late, which is mad pricing. What happens when you smash it into a rock on your second ride? Aside from crying, that is.

But for most of us, who don't really have the fitness or skills, or needs to make use of the weight savings from a 6k bike (or even a 3 bike), it's really not a necessity. More of a nice to have. A nice to ave that offers no real advantages other than knowing you own a really nice bike. A really nice bike that will provide additional stress and potentially hamper your enjoyment....unless of course money isn't a big deal.

Plenty of nice bikes for less money. And some of the budget offerings are great. Old kit works as well as the new stuff when well maintained...all the rest is just marketing guff.

One thing that concerns me though, are the people who genuinely can't afford it. Young kids mainly. It's not good for getting people into cycling when you're constantly told by the mainstream media that you need to spend 1k+ just to get started. How many years would you have to save your dinner money from school to get that? I once spent almost a year eating nothing but bread and milk (at school) to buy a guitar, and that was only £200.

Unfortunately a lot of things are marketed towards the middle classes because tat's were the money's at.

Or do we just perceive that because we have become them?

I agree, the prices now are rediculous. People still buy the products though!

But if you're sly and know your onions, you can just hoover up all the decent second hand goods. You've got to devote 2 to 3 hours a day scouring the classifieds and ebay to spot second hand bargains though, but when you see them, buy them!

The trick is to buy anything thats at a good price. If you need the item then all well and good, but if you dont require it, its easy to sell on at a profit anyway.

I have my smart phone set to auto refresh the classifieds page every 5 minutes so I can check it when Im out on the go. You've got to be quick to get a bargain.

A little motto for you "The early bird catches the worm!"

prices also stayed pretty level for most of the noughties so kind of just catching up

back in the day when I bought my first bike, steel rockhopper with rigid forks, cantis and cheese for chainrings was £400. You get way better than that for £400 now

but yes, top end prices seem to have gone silly. Which is fine, let the MAMILs overpay for top end kit while we get the mid-range at more sensible prices

There does seem to have been a lot of price rise since mid 2008 when you could (briefly) get XT shadow mechs for £30, SLX cranks for £65, XT for ~£88 from CRC/merlin

I suspect 'quantitive easing'/printing money has something to do with price rises amongst other factors

"seem to be an influx of 5 and 6k bikes of late"
I seem to think there were £4/5k bikes 4/5 years ago too though? Its the £8/9k+ top end race bikes that look pricey
you could get Fox/fox/LX level FS bikes for £1500 then from Spesh/Trek/etc. Now its what £2300ish?
Granted Canyon/others are cheaper but you're not able to get them through your LBS?

Mr Blessed, if you think new kit is expensive, pop over to RetroBike and see how much old kit is selling for, we now have a classic MTB scene!!

Stuff like YT Industries still seems like reasonable value.

Nahh. Not even close. It's all in your mind. There's no reason thinner pedals should cost much more. I've got some v8s which have had a right battering, but if they broke I'd just put on the wellgo v8 copies I have hanging around in a drawer. And there would be no difference at all.

It's all in your mind!

Probably, there probably are flat pedals just as good as the burgtechs, I've just not found them yet.

The Da Bombs are going back to CRC as the pins and pedal bodies had corroded together so the threads crumbled away when I undid them! Might have been a one off as it was only 2/3 of the pins on one of the pedals, but for £80 I wasn't expecting to be thread locking them myself in the first place!

I think I might wait and see what the Mk4 burgtechs look like, they do seem to have nailed the grip and bearing longevity (4 years without a squeak now), the weight came down a lot for the mk3 so hopefully the 4's will be thin too.

you could get Fox/fox/LX level FS bikes for £1500 then from Spesh/Trek/etc. Now its what £2300ish?

I think a lot of it is peoples expectations, they see £4k/£5k/£6k+ bikes and think they should have one, or at least somethign higher up the range than the basic model, so they get blinkered to the cheaper bikes. That and people naturally progress up the price ranges over time, either through higher disposable incomes or a desire for something nicer. So I bought my first MTB in 2000 for £275, and my current bike is probably 10x that, the bikes aren't 10x more expensive, but the amount I'm spending on them is.

You can still get a rockhoper for £400, and when you include inflation the fact that it's significantly better (and cheaper in real terms) than the same bike 5 years ago is pretty amazing.

The Voodoo Zobop is £1300 at the moment.Incredible value for the spec.Oh the joys of Halfords

I remember a time when a Ringlé seat skewer was something like £30. In the intervening 20 years I can get something from superstar every bit as good for a fiver delivered. Seeing as I'm no longer on £8.20 a week as a paper boy things are considerably cheaper taking inflation into account. My Claud Butler Pagan was £300 in 1990. 200GS, rigid steel & weighed 32lbs. Things are definitely better now!

I also think that if I worked out how much my spare time was worth to me & how much my hourly rate is that David Taylforth's shopping techniques would work out incredibly expensive compared to paying RRP! 😉

Just buy 12 months old bikes.

I saved £350 on my Giant TXC29er.

My Bionicon i paid £1300 for .... RRP was £2599.

There are bargains out there.... just just don't need to buy the latest kit.

I disagree, I bought my pitch (OK, so pretty much every component has failed in one way or another, but they were all supposed to be good components, but must have been a friday afternoon bike!) which was a pretty good spec for £1400 12 months ago.

I bought my Pitch for £999 in 2009.
It now wears coil Lyriks that cost me £30 (yes thirty!) after a but if trading, a £29 Cane Creek 110 heardset, Hope hubs on SUN rims that cost under £100 (under £40 if you include the sale of the OE ones) the back one is brand new.
The High Rolllers were under 20 for the pair, the Magura Louises were expensive at about £120 the set in about 2007 though, but that's only Deore money really...... The drivetrain, stem and seatpost are all OE l, the saddle was £15 and the wider bars about the same.

If I broke it up and sold it, I'd virtually get my money back.
Like I said, a bit of skill and persistence gets a nice bike for little money. The Lyriks weren't even for sale. I just asked the owner if I could buy them! 🙂

EDIT
Yep. My forks were 1/4 of the price of your pedals. 🙂

In 1997 Petrol cost 58p/l in 2004 when I got my first proper frame it was 78p/l now it's 135p/l

Things have gone up shockingly (I know petrol has tax etc to add to it)

Vat has increased

The £ is a shockingly worthless currency out there in the world where things are made (even the might orange bikes have to buy the raw materials from somewhere)

This Specialized http://www.specializedconceptstore.co.uk/Detail/12sjfsr/stumpjumper%20fsr/Stumpjumper%20FSR%20Comp%20Carbon
is £2800 with a nice looking spec (similar to some top end specs from 2004

The high point is higher now - Carbon and the lot has seen to that the mid point is still there and still very good

everything across the board has gone up a fair amount but forks seem to have gone up massively. I recall the normal RRP being about £350 a few years back, now it's more like £600 - £800.

I've just started buying Deore level kit & OEM parts instead of the tarty stuff. Still works just as well for half the price.

On the OEM subject a friend in the trade joked that Fox would sell a heap more forks if shops could buy at the OEM price...

I bought a 10 speed 531 framed Raleigh Record in 1975 for £57. In today's money that's about £500 which I'd say was about the same value for money.

Expensive stuff is Expensive Shocker!!!

Sorry OP but there is no law saying you have to buy the expensive items on sale.
Yes you [I]Can[/I] buy a mech for a £150 or Tires for £50 each but you can also buy a mech for £25-30 and tires for £20-25 normally from the same shops I think the assumption you are making is that the cheaper option is always the inferior one, this isn't actually very often the case IMO.
For instance the Deore Mech you can go and buy today in a shop is probably about on par with the XT you'd have bought a decade ago finish and function wise...

and a Fat IT manager will probably not notice the difference in grip between the £50 version and £25 version of his racing ralphs cos he'll pump both up to 50psi and skitter about the same trails whichever one he buys...

Surely the cheap reasonably priced kit and 2nd hand stuff that people are talking about has also gone up in price?

In what way does a 2002 Deore rear mech worked any differently to a 2012 one?

Ridiculous isn't it. A top end bmx can be had for about £500 if that, and usually they don't break as often or have niggly problems. Granted there's less technology in it an parts are smaller so probably stronger but still.

As for pedals, I've been using a couple of pairs of Wellgo V8 copies on bmxes and various mtbs over the past 5-6 years and still haven't broken a pair.

Definitely think that (some) bike gear is getting beyond a joke. £2700 for a frame is taking the P@SS, forks have gone up loads in the last few years. Even BMXs, bikes that used to be cheapish, are now a lot.

I bought my son a WTP arcade about 18 months ago (£250) now retail is over £100 more. 40% increase in a year and a half cannot be explained away by Vat and inflation.

_tom_ - Member
Ridiculous isn't it. A top end bmx can be had for about £500 if that

Mine was £800+ when it was new, and is a long way from the top end (it's stil got eastern hubs!). £500 would buy you a complete bike, hopefully with CrMo tubes, or a frame only from one of the more expensive brands with more upmarket tubing. BMX parts are pretty comparable to MTB bits, a basic 4130 frame is 456 frame money, Cr-Mo forks £60-£100, cranks, hubs, headsets, and evrything else is MTB money.

In the last 4 years the pound has devalued by about 30%, most of that in 2009 IIRC, hence imported goods are about 30% more when priced in GBP. It's not just bling, look at petrol, food, anything that we import - and the UK is a net importer.

Currency wars!

Mine was £800+ when it was new, and is a long way from the top end (it's stil got eastern hubs!). £500 would buy you a complete bike, hopefully with CrMo tubes, or a frame only from one of the more expensive brands with more upmarket tubing. BMX parts are pretty comparable to MTB bits, a basic 4130 frame is 456 frame money, Cr-Mo forks £60-£100, cranks, hubs, headsets, and evrything else is MTB money.

I guess, I haven't bmx'ed for a few years but last time I had one it cost £200 and had a ridiculous spec for that money - G-Sport/Odyssey wheels, primo cranks, sunday frame, odyssey dirt forks etc. You'd never get a mtb, even 2nd hand with that quality for that kind of money.

...£2700 for a frame is taking the P@SS

then don't buy it, get a titus el guapo, they're ace. and they're £900.

...forks have gone up loads in the last few years...

only if you've been convinced that you need them. i just bought some forks for £160.

I think Shimano stuff is a good basis for seeing if prices have changed.

Prices I remember Shimano XT cranks + BB

2000 CRC price - £100 cranks £BB about £30ish
2007/2008 CRC price - £80 Cranks + BB
2012 CRC - £150 Cranks + BB

Basically there was a slow drop in price from 2000 to 2008.
Then a massive jump now things have stabilised again.

Oh look the complete inverse to this.

[url= http://www.x-convert.com/chart/GBP-JPY?period=10y ]Yen v Pound[/url]

I think there have been some massive price increases as the pound has dropped in value. Looks like shimano have actually managed to keep the XT crankset at exactly the same price in Yen for a good 10 years.

Dont know what inflation has been in that time in Japan mind.

[i]brianblessed - HOW MUCH ? !!!![/i]

just me hearing the man himself saying this everytime the thread pops back up to the top of the page?

I bought my built-up 2007 cotic for what I considered a good s/h price, and have been updating components on it for three years - with a mixture of old and new.

Between the forums here, pinkbike, LBS and ebay, there's very little that can't be found at a lower price, nor much that isn't 95% as good but half the price when it's a year old - I just got my new Revs for 400 , nearly half what they'd have been when first released.

Maybe I'm not much of a rider, but it's very rare the ride when, full flow, speeding through the trees, I think 'I wish I'd spent twice as much on my pedals'. The gear's important, but only in as much as it enhances the experience, IMO.

The best rider I know has a Spesh hardrock that's ten years old, suntour forks and a healthy disregard for the fashions and fads of MTB. DOn't let the market take the piss, I say.

top end is more expensive now for sure, but it's 'better', or at least more technically advanced, harder to make, etc. But low end price points are better value because of that development at the top end. Bonus. unless you have to have the newest stuff - but you'll always pay for that in whatever you're buying - washing machines, cars, trainers - everything. There's a bigger gap between entry level and top-end - that's all. In general, it's actually better VFM at the mass consumer price points than ever before.

Particular things have risen disproportionately though - tyres being one of them - rubber prices have tripled in less than 2 years, transport cost quadrupled from the far east in less than a year, and workers now have more rights, minimum wages etc - yet you've not seen tyres quadruple in price. sure, big price rises, but way less margin being made by the companies in the supply chain.

You're all actually seeing the nice, softly padded end of a very pointy stick for people further up the supply chain...

oddly this seems to happen in any past times where lots of middle aged blokes with too much spare money get involved (I include myself in this bracket).

Same thing happened with fishing in the 80's (I'm told)
and motorcycles in the later 90's.
Supply Vs Demand?

the only good news I can take from this is that as wider interest wains, the 2nd hand market will be flooded with cheaper bits and as a few shitter LBS go to the wall there will be some cheap unused old stock too.

Bikes and components are dear but only if you fail to shop around. If you are led by the nose and feel your experience of mtbing will be blighted unless you spend 3k plus on the latest mag promotion blingfest then yes,it will be expensive. A bit of nouse and research online can net some real bargains. Folk want to spend money, and occasionally a bit of conspicuous consumerism does us all good. If the above mentioned fat IT manager wants to upgrade to XO then let him, coz I'll be able to get his old xt cranks for dead right money.

I've just spent three months putting a 140 build together. 2x10 xt, slx brakes, Pro 2 on Arch ex nobby Nic snakeskins , carbon bars, wtb, thompson for the princely sum of £1200. All parts bar chain and front mech used or "NEW OTHER"

Research,research,research!

As Peter Poddy demonstrates it need not be expensive.I recently bought a nice Anthem X for £750,with XT groupset.

Last week I got a set of as new still in the original box Roval Control wheels for £180. via ebay.

Sometimes the expensive component is functionally no better,and as pointed out mid range these days is so good,XT brakes for instance have pretty ineffective free stroke and reach adjust,the SLX versions are every bit as good.Its often the same with forks,you pay a lot more for dual air,travel adjust,poplocs etc,but you pay a lot for these feaures which are seldom used.

I`m also using ebay more and more for new purchases,instead of Merlin,Wiggle,CRC and the like.

I`ve got some good deals via the likes of Koo bikes,High on bikes and Absolute cycles ebay shops of late.

Its amazing how much you can save by doing your own servicing too.

And avoid buying Shimano service items/consumables.Eg: instead of genuine Shimano mineral oil Hlafords do it for £5.Superstar for brake pads at £5 per end instead of £15.

...XT brakes for instance have pretty ineffective free stroke and reach adjust,the [s]SLX[/s] deore versions are every bit as good.Its often the same with forks,you pay a lot more for dual air,travel adjust,poplocs etc,but you pay a lot for these feaures which are seldom used.

agreed.

Happy to be proven wrong but, for the majority of riders, is the level of technological development of bikes more a marketing ploy than providing any seriously discernible performance improvement to the rider?

top end is only expensive if you pay full RRP. Loads of high end frames (Turner, Ibis, Yeti, Orange to name a few) been available new-old stock for half price or less. Same goes for forks (Marz recently, see Rose fork deals thread), tyres (schwalbes half price at On One), Thomson and Easton stuff at Merlin recently on sale for used prices, groupsets from German mail order houses. Just about built you a nice new bike for half price...