[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.