Anyone notice that you can't search on NADA earlier than 1975? Bummer. I wonder when/why they did that?
No one in the marine industry has taken NADA seriously for years. Their values have been about as accurate as a drunk shooting darts from 40 yards. They could just as well drop all boats as garbage in = garbage out.No doubt that is a part of it.
It does not matter what you or I or NADA think. Boats are not valued like cars and unfortunately that is how NADA tried to apply its formula. Boats are valued on, condition, market, what an buyer is willing to pay, what buyers have paid for similar models and the selling prices from soldboats.com. Some models have actually gone up in value and good brokers and surveyors, who value boats for a living, understand how to more closely asses the value of a boat than NADA..Do you really think there is a significant difference between a (for example) 1974 Columbia 26 and a 1975 Columbia 26?
I guess that all depends on how you define "accomplish". If you define it as putting inaccurate numbers, apparently compiled using the drunk & a dart board method, then posted on a web site that where they are often off as much as 50% from real and actual sales data then, yes, I guess they "accomplished" valuing boats..Prior to a month or two ago, NADA was able to accomplish that feat.
They could have gone back to 1923 but bad data, is still bad data, and completely useless in the whole scheme of things.I know they went back to 1970, at least and am fairly confident they went back to 1968 which is the oldest year for my model.
Yes there is something else it is called Soldboats.com and it uses actual selling prices as reportedby brokers ans sales agents afiliated with Yachtworld.com.There were also a lot of boats built in the 60s and 70s that are still chugging along. Yachtworld lists 562 sailboats under 51 feet for sale in the US and Canada built between 1970 and 1974. 1270 for 1970 to 1979. Definitely fewer boats in that era but I think there is something else going on here.
Perhaps they dropped it because they realized that they had no place guessing at this data and decided to be kind to people and stop posting bogus figures that meant squat..I'm guessing they did a 25 year whack of the data for bean counting purposes right around the decade mark. Which would make sense if they printed paper versions. But storage is practically free in the computer world.
Ed,I believe that anyone considering the purchase of a used boat should have as much information about the purchase as possible. It is another data point that should help any prospective buyer make an informed decision. Knowing the market for a particular year make and model can be as important as knowing what brand of engine, or the moisture reading of the hull and deck.
I have to respectfully disagree with Main Sail on his characterization on NADA as "Their values have been about as accurate as a drunk shooting darts from 40 yards." Unless he knows better drunk dart players than I do... NADA, IMHO, is consistently at the low end of the spectrum.
I also, respectfully, disagree about soldboats.com being the ONLY close to accurate resource. BUCvalue (Boat Values, Prices, Evaluations, Used Boat Price Guides - BUCValu) is another resource, which I believe is slightly more accurate, and it allows 3 price views in a 3 month time window. I have also looked at SOLD prices in eBay as a data point.
Using your example here is a comparison of the values from the three main sources (BUCvalu, NADAguides, and SoldBoats.com) for a '75 Columbia 26.
BUCvalu; $5450-$6250
NADAguides $5650-$6400 - Note that this is a little HIGHER than BUC
SoldBoats.com
Note the range of years (1972-1978), and the range of dates of sale (1996-2010) that I used in my search... If I tighten up the dates of sale to last year only, there were 2 that sold. The one in GA, listed for $2995, which sold for $2400 after 14 months, and one in NC, listed for $10, and sold for $10 after 20 months. If you were using SoldBoats to figure the current average selling price of this boat (2410 / 2 = $1205), you would be far under what BUC and NADA provide.
I would state that there is more information available through Soldboats.com. However, the only accurate measure of the value of a specific boat to you is what you are willing to pay for it, and what the seller is willing to accept.
I've said this elsewhere in SailNet; "The value of any specific boat (or anything) is only determined after a specific seller and a specific buyer agree to a specific price at a specific time. Changing any one of these can affect the price dramatically."
I hope this helps!