FAQ: The Top 15 Road Bikes That Hold Their Value

If a Certified Pre-Owned bike has a hot price, it will sell within a few days. Some bikes sell the day they get listed (people using a Saved Search get alerts and scoop them up fast). If a bike has a less appealing price though, it will sit for a while, sometimes months. If it doesn’t move, it gets marked down. We can’t reveal the secret sauce, but there is an ideal amount of time we want bikes to sit on the site, and we’ve collected years of data, written fancy algorithms, and created dashboards to help our small team price bikes to sell within that window. 

Today, we’re interested in what that data reveals about road bikes that hold their value best. We know the original retail price of nearly every bike we sell and can compare that to the average selling price for used models. Using this, we’ve deduced which brands and bikes resist depreciation the best.  

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The 15 Strongest Road Bike Brands - Ranked

Let’s start with the bigger picture — which road bike brands, on average, resist depreciation the best? This ranking is based on data for bikes that TPC sold within the last 3 years. 

I had my co-worker George Simpson pull this data. George is a member of our bike purchasing team at TPC and a key part of his job is determining the value of the used bikes we decide to buy and sell based on years of data (we’ve been at it since 2006) and tracking what they actually sell for compared to our predictions and their original MSRP. He is the perfect partner for this task. 

George’s Observations:

1. The first thing that jumps out to me on this list are the clear heavy-hitters Trek and Specialized. They’re tied for 3rd at 61% of MSRP, but they dwarf the competition in terms of units sold. We sell 3-4x more Specializeds and Treks than the next top brands, but their average resale value remains extremely high, which says a lot. 
2. I think Canyon coming in with the highest average sales % of MSRP says a lot about consumer sentiment toward the brand. Their direct-to-consumer model means lower overall prices when comparing similar models across brands. Having the lowest depreciation seems to indicate that people are not associating the lower price point with a lesser product. 
3. The biggest surprise for me was Ventum. They had some significant discounts and sales this past year and it definitely lowered our evaluation of them for that period. It seems the brand has rebounded very well though!

The 15 Strongest Road Bike Models - Ranked

George’s Observations:

• The Cervelo Soloist is at the top of the list with an incredible average resale of 77% of MSRP. My highly biased take: People are excited about a performance-oriented road bike that doesn't need a proprietary stem and handlebar. 
• In line with the top-performing brands, Canyon’s Ultimate CF SL was in second place. I was surprised not to see the Endurace on this list as they are one of our most popular sellers every year. 
• Collectively, endurance road bikes performed very strongly with the Specialized Roubaix,  Cervelo Caledonia, and Trek Domane all in the top 6, splitting the results with more aggressive road racing bikes. 
• The Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL7 was 8th in terms of % of MSRP, but it was still impressive with the highest average resale prices ($8,893!). It was the most highly valued bike on the list by a large margin. 
• A final shout-out has to go out to the Specialized Allez Sprint. Overall, alloy road bikes don’t hold their value as well as carbon road bikes. That’s not the case with the Allez Sprint. We still see strong demand for rim brake Allez Sprints with mechanical groupsets! 

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