So you’ve seen my Strava from this morning?
That’s mostly melted now.
Road gritter is out and the surface water is black sludge.
I’ve seen a few S-Works with no guards and a Canyon in Movistar colours. Full matching kit on all riders. Beggars belief how people have money for these bikes and kit, but not £1k for a winter bike 
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Until you’ve destroyed one bike on winter roads I don’t think you realise what all the fuss is about “winter bikes”. I made that rookie error. It didn’t kill my bike off but it made for some expensive services in the months after.
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My winter riding generally involves commuting which is what I got a fixie for. In 6 years I’ve spent about 50 on tyres and about 30quid on chain, chainring and sprocket
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I’ve never even had a credit card with a limit over £10k.
Mine is £2,750, can’t imagine needing more than that. I’d be thinking overnight about any purchase more than that and EFT some, CC a token amount as that gives you the protection on the whole purchase.
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But the carbon frame isn’t going to suffer from winter riding, just the components. Maybe these people are switching over their drivetrain every spring and autumn.
I have a winter bike, but it is not as much fun to ride as my summer one. As I’m not commuting at the moment, I’m not riding it. I’ve gone soft and will only ride outside in winter if the weather is nice, and then I can take the nice bike.
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My issue is that I’ve never had a summer bike, just winter ones that I take the mudguards off 
Been looking at some recently as work have just started a cycle2work scheme.
New bikes are pretty expensive!!
Carbon/Ultegra/disk = £3000+
Ultegra Di2 = £4000+
eTap = 5000+
Eye watering
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Super bikes seem to have moved from the £5-6k region to £10k with very few people saying ‘that’s absurd’.
They’ve become a little like perfume. Manufacturing costs of a ridiculously expensive perfume is similar to a cheap one; they spend more on packaging and marketing and get away with it as people think as it’s expensive it is genuinely better…
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Hmm…whilst expensive perfumes do indeed have fancy packaging and marketing, they have a very different scent to the cheaper copies and they certainly last longer.
Expensive perfumes contain expensive ingredients;
Bulgarian Rose Oil or Jasmine Oil, not a synthesised version, are expensive raw materials.
Mouldy oud? $5k per pound 
Your cheaper stuff will have a synthesised version.
I’d say it’s like the difference between Shimano and MicroShift.
Whilst I agree the idea a bicycle is worth over £10K is absurd, that’s just arbitrary - we all know that cost of any product and value to the customer are only ever partially to do with manufacturing costs. Plus of course a focus on manufacturing cost exists anyway and drives manufacturers to use labour in countries with questionable human rights practices.
Not sure if it is still the case but in the late 90s the same company in NY that helped develop the top perfumes of the day also worked on the flavouring for McDonalds fries and created a lot of the smells for the scratch ‘n’ sniff freebies hot-dotted into GQ/FHM et al
I was trying to explain this to my boss the other day. We were talking about aero stuff (got there in a round about way through a convo about Cabinet papers!)
He asked if TT bikes are worth ‘x’ and I said it was like a lot of things. A certain amount gets you ‘entry’ and certain amount on top of that get’s you ‘more’ which can be significant but depends on your priorities and anything else after that is a black hole that gives you virtually zero ROI, except to say ‘that’s what I wanted’.
But for me, the biggest jump is the first TT frame coupled with even relatively budget aero wheels. After that, most of it s window dressing if we’re honest.
Guitars can be the same.
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Yup!!!
Silly helmet and some shoe covers and you’re away 
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I have that conversation a lot when I went from a Cervelo P5 to a Giant Trinity Frame. The folk I knew asked why didn’t I get another super bike. I loved the P5 but I could get 3 Trinity frames for the price of a P5 and I don’t believe there is that much difference in straight line speed. The lid, position on the bike and engine are what matters.
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But you already had the P5, why the move? disc brakes, easier to travel with? just curious.
GTN have been lurking here 
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I had a major blow out and totalled the frame and myself. The down tube had a significant crack in it so it has to be retired. The Magura brakes were ok and I travelled enough to be able to break it down and rebuild in 20 mins.
The thought of having to spend 5k on a new frame didn’t sit well so if I could get a new Trinity frame for 1600 then I was happy to ‘downgrade’. At the time of getting the P5 I worked for a successful fin tech and the money I was paid was stupid. Oh they were the days
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It’s not just bikes though is it, I am somewhat shocked about the cost of top end bikes and it’s also dragging up the cost of lower end ones as well. But if there’s a market for £10k bikes the companies are going to exploit it.
I either look in the sales or use things like cyclescheme or second hand, but increasingly I don’t think I’ll be buying too many high end bikes, Di2 is good but I’ve had few problems with 105 on the Ti bike when it’s set up properly.
Even cars, I couldn’t believe it when I saw the top of the range Fiesta is ~£28k new! I must have missed inflation in recent years or something, or be a tight Yorkshireman. I appreciate it’s quite a high performance car, but I got a top of the range Mondeo estate with 12 months\18k on the clock for about £16k only 7 years ago.
I’ve also got enough bike kit to last quite a few years 
Edit: to back this up look at the current cost of PC’s and in particular graphics card where demand is massively outstripping supply, a good graphics card will cost more than I’ve paid for some full PC’s in the past!
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Does it though? There are quite a few carbon repair places around now that do great work. Target Composites in one. Many others. Might be worth a look if it’s a bike you enjoy riding.
I think a lot of super bikes are bought on finance; they crop up regularly on eBay not very old. There are a lot of dreamers out there when it comes to asking price.
This joker wants £8k for a Plasma 3 based on a pic of the BB. That bike must be at least 6-7 years old 