Expensive bikes - hard to sell 2nd hand

[aea730]

I'm in the market for a nice "boutique" road bike. I'm doing the usual of trawling the many selling sites to see what's out there and one thing is quite apparent, anything with a price tag over 2k is hard to move. There have been numerous bikes coming up, with eBay being the obvious outlet but seemingly no interest with bikes being re listed numerous times. There are some instances where sellers are clearly optimistic on price but the 2k threshold seems to be the point where stuff sticks. Bikes at sub £1k sell all day but a £2500 cervelo/look/pinarrello/Colnago/etc struggles to attract a buyer.

Is it that unless these bikes are massively cheaper than new most people would rather get a fresh out the box bike. What is a reasonable price for a little used bike that was possibly 3k new. I'm at the point now that I reckon a 3k bike is worth max 2k at best once it's been ridden out of the showroom

[aea730]

We'll I never imagined my little post making 5 pages, some very interesting points of view on here though. The bottom line still seems to be that most sellers seem wildly optimistic about the value of their bike. I just wonder though what happens after a few weeks of trying to sell, do they just live with it ?