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USED MOTORCYCLE PRICE GUIDES CAN HELP YOU DETERMINE IF THE PRICE IS… CLOSE TO RIGHTThe two primary used motorcycle price guides I automatically think of are Kelley Blue Book and the NADA guide. These are most famous for being price guides for cars and trucks, but they offer values of motorcycles as well.
Kelley Blue BookKelley Blue Book is probably the most famous pricing guide for vehicles. Traditionally associated with the values of cars and trucks, you can now use it as a used motorcycle price guide whether you are looking to buy or sell. KBB is the de facto standard in vehicle values and dates back to 1926 and has been online since 1995. For use as used motorcycle price guides, you can go to their website and pick the link to motorcycles. They only have values for used motorcycles, not new ones like they do for cars. You can select from two different types of values you may want: a bike’s trade-in value if you traded it in to a dealer, and the dealer’s retail value of a used motorcycle. Either way, it’s a very straight-forward process. After clicking on the year, you pick the make and then model on successive screens. At the end, it spits out the value you can expect in either case. This is an average value based on your area of the country.
NADA GuideIf Kelley Blue Book is the most famous of the price guides, the NADA guides claim to be the most widely used by dealers and banks. The NADA website gives more detailed pricing on the value of motorcycles by offering values according to the condition of the particular motorcycle. The process is just as idiot-proof as it is on the KBB site: you will be asked to give your zip code to allow for regional price differences, then just pick the year, make, model and pretty soon you have your values for a range of conditions in most cases. Probably more important than your area is the season you are looking to buy or sell a motorcycle. When spring is in the air and the summer riding season is on its way, obviously there is going to be more demand for motorcycles, so prices are most likely going to be higher than in fall or winter when people are looking to unload their bikes so they don’t have to store them over the off-season. Of course, you can’t necessarily expect the value you get from one of these used motorcycle price guides to be right on the money. They are a good ballpark for you to get an idea of the value of a particular bike. They state that the values they give are “average” values that are affected by regional market conditions, seasons, condition of the actual bike, etc. Basically, they are to be trusted about as much as your average weather forecast: you’re not surprised when they’re right, but you shouldn’t be shocked when they’re way off either.
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