2-Wheel ATVDirtMoto CrossSupermotard3-Wheel StreetDirt TrackScooterTouring4-Wheel ATVDual SportSidecarTrials6-Wheel ATVEnduroStreet: SportUtility Vehicle8-Wheel ATVMopedStreet: Standard & Cruiser Or Select a MakeGet a Motorcycle ValueMotorcycle Blue Book Value is the generic term for all vehicle pricing resources. If you are in the market for a used motorcycle, how can you be sure you're getting a good deal? How about if you want to sell your bike and don't know what it's worth? If you are a seller, you could always start at a high price and incrementally bring it down until you find a buyer. But that could take a lot of time and effort, and you would probably prefer to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. And for you buyers out there, you just know that if you pay what the seller is asking, it's only a matter of days before someone tells you where you could have gotten a better bike for a lower price. Is there any way to avoid this hassle? Of course, there is and it's called the "blue book."
Most of you probably know the answer to this already. If you answered "Kelley Blue Book," you are right, at least technically. But "blue book" has come to be thought of, fairly or unfairly, as the generic term for all vehicle pricing resources. And there are a few of them out there, the two most prominent being the Kelley Blue Book, and the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Guides. Each of these resources provides prices based on different criteria and you are bound to get different, sometimes significantly different, estimates from each. So how do you know who to trust? Here's the confusing answer: Trust them both and don't totally trust any one of them. To explain why here's a brief look at each.The Kelley Blue Book is the best known of all the sources. It is, after all, where the "blue book" term comes from. Kelley determines its prices for used motorcycles by gathering information from dealer surveys and sales reports. As a result, many people feel that estimates provided by Kelley favor dealers and are, therefore, on the higher end of the price spectrum.
Dealers like these prices because they can low-ball them and claim to customers that their prices are "below Blue Book." Private sellers like them because they make them think their bikes are worth more than what they might really bring on the open market. This is where the old axiom of "buyer beware" comes into play. If you are a buyer, don't necessarily take a Kelley Blue Book estimate as the price you should pay for a used bike, but instead as a top price that you should negotiate down from.NADA guides, taken as a whole, have the highest circulation by far when compared to the other valuation sources. Some people believe that this makes them the source to go to. NADA claims to have access to millions of transactions, both wholesale and retail, that they use in calculating their prices. It's believed by many that NADA numbers are preferred by insurance companies. NADA estimates often come close to Kelley Blue Book. This is not always the case, however.You were hoping for an easy answer here, weren't you?
Actually, the answer is pretty simple: If possible, check out all three pricing resources. Each one's prices can be accessed online. And, most importantly, remember that these guides are just that: guides that are meant to help buyers and sellers alike determine fair prices for bikes.Motorcycles are often customized by their owners, so changes to a model's factory specs will have a modifying effect on price estimates. Other factors, such as condition, mileage, geographic location, even color, can play a significant role in ultimate price. A great negotiating tool is to gather as many price quotes as possible, from the big three resources discussed above, as well as any others you can find online, and show them to the other party. They may help bring an otherwise unrealistic buyer or seller back to Earth in terms of a fair price.Last Updated: Jan 11th 2017 at 3:00PM"We're selling below Blue Book!" "Get true Blue Book value for your trade-in!" Whether you're buying or selling a car, truck or SUV, you can't get away from what we'd call Blue Book mania.
At one time the Blue Book value was a used car insider's term like 'cream puff' or 'cherry', but today the phrase is, uh, all over the lot. Born of the original restricted-circulation, dealer-only NADA guide of used car wholesale and retail values, the Blue Book has become one of the major merchandising devices of modern vehicle selling. From used car lots to new car dealers, they all claim to sell cars at or below Blue Book while buying your trade-in well above Blue Book! What, actually, is a Blue Book? Who started this whole arbitrary pricing bible? How accurate are they and how do they get their numbers? Most importantly, do they provide truly valuable information to help you get the best deal, whether you're buying or selling new or used? Although the real Blue Book goes by the brand name Kelley Blue Book (much like 'Kleenex' for tissues), the term has become generic for all vehicle pricing guides. There are three principal reference sources heading a wide array of vehicle pricing information available today through printed matter, the Internet, and a varied assortment of online communicators, including – of course – Autoblog.
Find your car's value now. allows consumers to become the experts on their purchase, helping fuel definitively smart auto choices with editorial reviews, pricing tools, consumer ratings and more." Notable, also, is the intuitive nature of the value search, and a trade-in range that seems more optimistic than that offered by Black Book. Kelley Blue Book, with more than 20 million unique visitors each month, promotes itself as offering the largest new and used car audience online." Kelley Blue Book has historically collected its information by attending auctions throughout the country. It rates its used car evaluations as Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor. From those, Kelley Blue Book then sets wholesale values based on what are called 'front line' (as in 'traffic stopper') vehicles, which also includes costs for reconditioning, transportation and auction fees. NADA Guide: The Yellow Book Now owned by J.D. Power & Associates (while still based in Northern Virginia), a spokesman for the NADA Guide supplied us with this overview:
"NADA Used Car Guide begins its valuation process with data collection, grouped generally into two categories: transactional data and market data. Transaction data gives us an indication of what vehicles are currently worth through several different sales channels. Market data also comes in through multiple sources and concerns economic factors that include fuel price, employment figures, interest rates and incentive data, among others. Analysis of market data gives us an idea of what the auto market will look like in the future. Like other vehicle value providers, NADA Used Car Guide publishes different value types that represent values through different sales channels. Our retail values are intended to represent the sale price of a clean vehicle at a car dealer. Our rough, average, and clean Trade-In values are intended to represent typical prices of trade-ins at various conditions. We also publish a Loan value to help lenders establish a baseline amount of credit to extend on a vehicle purchase.
All these value types are published monthly and with them we make every effort to reflect real price movement in the marketplace without including inherent random market volatility." Now under the Hearst publishing umbrella, a Black Book spokesman offered this: "Black Book® is best known in the automotive industry for providing timely, independent and accurate vehicle pricing information, and is available to industry-qualified users through online subscription products, mobile applications and licensing agreements. A leading provider since 1955, Black Book has continuously evolved to ensure that it achieves its goal of delivering mission-critical information to its customers, along with the data analytics necessary to successfully buy, sell, and lend. Black Book data is published daily by National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business media, and the company maintains offices in Georgia, Florida, and Maryland as well as the Canadian Black Book in Toronto." What Do the Pros Use?
According to Lynn Faeth, referring to the used car operation of his nationally-noted The Scout Connection dealership in Fort Madison, Iowa, "I use the Kelley Blue Book and the Black Book for used car valuation. But the Black Book CPI (a guide for older, special interest vehicles – ed.) is my mainstay in determining the true value of any rare or unusual vehicle which I buy or sell." Seconding Faeth's comment is John Gorton, the manager of Gerton Auto Sales, a large, successful used car enterprise in Mt. Vernon, Indiana, "I use the Black Book - the electronic version - exclusively in my operation, because its used car pricing seems to be more accurate and up to date." "The system I use," added longtime Southern California car salesman Roger Himmel, "combines checking value of a trade-in or used car purchase in Kelley Blue Book and the NADA guide, then telephoning wholesalers or other dealers to see what the value is to them. After all, for everything I buy I must then find a buyer."
We took a look at two cars, a 2013 Subaru Crosstrek and '06 Jeep Grand Cherokee, to see how the guides compared. In establishing a value for the Subaru, a Premium trim 5-speed with 10,000 miles, Black Book supplied the low ball, suggesting a trade-in range of between $12,800 and $15,600. Black Book also required us to supply personal information, and while you could (obviously) make something up, we chose to provide the site with the real info; as we were doing so, however, we found it intrusive. On that same Subaru, Kelley Blue Book gave us a range of between $17,777 and $19,100, while NADA was essentially an overlay, estimating our clean (exceptionally clean!) Subie was worth between $17,150 and almost $19K. The Jeep narrative was somewhat similar, although given the older age of the Jeep and necessarily higher miles (100K) the range of estimates was more narrow. Here Black Book suggested a trade-in of between $5,500 and $8,215, NADA was hitting it at between $7,600 and $8,450, and KBB – using 'Excellent' in the condition report – hit the GC at between $5,500 and $7,685.
The bottom line as to which book to use is that there is no steady, set, fixed bottom line; they are all good, dependable, honest sources of information, some better than others for specific vehicles or markets or needs or purposes. When it comes to buying and/or selling a new or used vehicle, you might say the best method would be to use a combination of a used car classifieds search, your judgment and these sources as your own value guide, remembering that they are guides – and not, notably, the Magna Car-ta. When to Replace Your Tires Should You Get Car Parts at the Dealership? How You May be Prematurely Aging Your Car When to Buy Snow Tires Preventing Auto Repairs Before They Cost You Dearly Do You Really Need that Alignment? How Often to Change Your Car's Oil The best cars we drove in 2016 These cars will still be cool in 2027 New Car Buying Guides Biggest automotive sales disappointments Fastest-depreciating cars in the United States