Buying a used boat today is like buying large quantities of cocaine online, it’s dangerous and full of unknowns. And how do you pay the person? Cash? Bank check? Bitcoin? I’m not sure, I don’t buy cocaine online, but for boats some of the same hurdles exist. The worst part of the used boat market is the prices, they are all over the map. In this article I want to cover a few points about trying to price a used boat, it is very challenging. In order to get a fair price, there are a few key things to consider and the biggest is the market itself, as in what is this brand and model garnering on the market now? What condition is the boat in and what is the engine worth? These are just a few points to consider, there are many more technical things and less technical things like sentimental value, which boats seem to have a lot of.

One reason our Classified Classics section is so popular is that we try to make fun of used boat ads, but also try to include some useful information, “try” to anyway. One thing that comes up is the price, you see some prices that are shocking. Some of the boats are really old, obviously need a ton of work and the engine usually looks like it is ready for the scrap yard. And, when someone says their 30 year old boat, that has been kept outside for it’s whole life, is solid, you have a reason to be skeptical. I would say, once you establish a few of the models you are interested in, look into how they are built and see what other owners experienced as to the quality. Most boats built over 20 years ago had wood in them, from the transom to the stringers, so you can be pretty confident that many of those boats are going to need some work to those areas. If you aren’t doing the work yourself, it can be very expensive to repair.

Why are the prices so all over the map? A few reasons. The first being that the boat market is unique in that there are so many builders. There are major manufacturers with multiple brands and there are small builders building a small number of hulls a year, which means there are thousands of boats being built every year by many brands. This has been going on forever, so you get literally hundreds of boat brands, many of which are gone now. It’s hard to tell the quality ones from the bad ones sometimes. Because of this, there is less quantifiable data on used boat prices compared to a controlled market like cars. For cars, you can have a clear idea of what a specific car is worth based on year, mileage and condition. In fact, there are several industry reports on these prices for wholesale and retail updated continuously. Boats don’t have the same measures and it is harder to identify “mileage” and condition in many cases.