I have been looking at used bikes for a few weeks. I started using craigshelper.org to search the West Coast craigslist sites but was a little hard to keep track of what I had already looked at. I briefly tried using an RSS reader, which was good for seeing new bikes, but still couldn't sort by year, price, etc.

So I wrote a little program to pull in the craigslist RSS feeds from the western U.S. sites and selected big cities. I parsed the ads to pull out the year, price, and other details into a database and automatically remove duplicate postings.

I thought it might be of interest to people buying/selling to see what the average asking prices are over nearly 3,000 posts that can be sliced by year, model, etc.

For example, average prices for 2002 or newer Fat Boy's:

http://www.mostexcellenttoys.com/har...LSTF%&prices=1

List of 2002 or newer Fat Boy models at 12K or less.

http://www.mostexcellenttoys.com/har...0&minYear=2002

There are links to the original ads, and this list is updated pretty frequently. Note that I am looking for a 02 or later Road King, so those models are not shown, sorry. For some additional notes:

http://www.mostexcellenttoys.com/harley/?

I see deals come by, that will be removed by the poster within a day or two, but it seems most of these bikes don't sell and keep getting relisted. Some will never sell at what they are asking, usually the ads say something like "over 25K invested" as if they expect some kind of return. Kind of hard to take someone serious about their bike when you know there are 3 others just like it within a couple hundred miles asking considerably less..

Thought someone here might find this interesting. No guarantee I will keep this up once I buy a bike. Also I think I am still within the craigslist.org TOS, but they could start blocking referrals..

Given this economy and the tight lending from the banks, most sales probably have to be cash deals. I figure that is why the people that aren't under a lot of pressure to sell still have their bikes on the market and the only ones that seem to get removed by the poster are the distress sales with prices substantially lower than the averages.

Do you think the used market prices will go higher in the current economy as summer approaches?

 

I think the prices may hold still for a little while but i think they will possibly start to hold a little better or creap up if harley stays true to there production. With the cut they announced in dec of last year and the cut announced at the end of jan this year i think they are reducing production by about 20some %.

That being said anything used is only worth what someone is willing to pay and there are a sh it load of used bikes out there and i look for alot more to go on the for sale list when spring hits so i think it will be a buyers market not a sellers. Alot of the people that just bought a harley to have one and don't ride it will be looking to sell.

And if you watch and have cash youll get a deal but youll have to be quick.

We just picked my uncle up one off craigslist guy needed to sell was 2004 low rider braided cables, extra chrome, 3 seats one was corbin, quick detach sissy bar luggage rack, SE slip ons, cover, battery tender. Only 4,800 miles on the bike for $8,000 guy wanted it gone only road it last year 500 miles and didn't need it.

 

Way too cool. Awesome job on your program/database.

 

Nice Job!
Chopperexchange also has a price comparison search..Free too!
http://www.chopperexchange.com/sellers/report/

 

Very nice job.
Yea I sometimes laugh at the $25k invested. Like they expect someone to give the something for the original sales tax, dealer setup fees, $2000 over MRP, gas, oil changes, first two paint jobs, three seats, 4 sets of exhaust etc. Somehow those people never seem to have the take-off parts either.

 

Pretty cool!

Yeh.....you can tell who the "rookie sellers" are, expecting people to pay face value for every Willie G skull bolt or chrome cotter pin or whatever. If they looked at al the used bikes that the dealer will have come spring.....