FAQ: Top 9 Gravel Bikes That Hold Their Value

If a Certified Pre-Owned bike has a hot price, it will sell within a few days. Some bikes sell the day they get listed (people using a Saved Search get alerts and scoop them up fast). If a bike has a less appealing price though, it will sit for a while, sometimes months. If it doesn’t move, it gets marked down. We can’t reveal the secret sauce, but there is an ideal amount of time we want bikes to sit on the site, and we’ve collected years of data, written fancy algorithms, and created dashboards to help our small team price bikes to sell within that window. 

Today, we’re interested in what that data reveals about gravel bikes that hold their value. We know the original retail price of nearly every bike we sell and can compare that to the average selling price for used models. Using this, we’ve deduced which brands and bikes resist depreciation the best.  

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The 9 Strongest Gravel Bike Brands

Let’s start with the bigger picture — which gravel bike brands, on average, resist depreciation the best? This ranking is based on data for bikes that TPC sold within the last 3 years. 

I had my co-worker George Simpson pull this data. George is a member of our bike purchasing team at TPC and a key part of his job is determining the value of the used bikes we decide to buy and sell based on years of data (we’ve been at it since 2006) and tracking what they actually sell for compared to our predictions and their original MSRP. He is the perfect partner for this task. I asked George to list the top 5 gravel bike brands, but since he’s an overachiever, he gave us a list of the top 9 brands. 

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It may come as no surprise, but several of the brands listed here also align with the most popular bike brands we sell. However, the rankings shocked us as we expected big names like Specialized and Trek to top the list. It was Cervelo, however, who led the way. 

George speculated that Cervelo was stronger than Specialized and Trek because it only produces a single gravel model — the Aspero — and it’s a fairly high-end bike that only comes in carbon. Also, up until this year, there has only been one generation of the Aspero. “Maybe with the new Aspero out, this will start to decline,” George said. 

Canyon coming in second place was also a bit of a surprise since they’re a DTC brand. Its Grizl and Grail are two of the most popular gravel bikes currently on the market. “I thought Canyon taking second might be primarily due to the strength of the Grizl,” George said, “But I see in our data that the Grail is ranked above the Grizl. I guess people might like those hover bars after all!”

Specialized was the strongest brand in our MTB depreciation rankings, but it is only 7th on the gravel bike list. Despite this, George explained that Specialized is far and away the most “popular” brand. Only Trek comes close. Compared to the other 5 brands ahead of it, we sell 2-3 times more Specialized bikes. This likely impacted its ranking, because this includes many lower-end and budget-oriented models that don’t hold their value as well as high-end carbon and S-Works models. 

For George, the biggest surprise on this list was Salsa. “I did not even consider this brand when I started,” he admitted. “Thinking about it, however, the Warbird and especially the Cutthroat surprise me every time I price one.” 

Top 9 Gravel Bike Models That Hold Their Value

Right in line with the top brands listed above, it was the Cervelo Aspero in first! Again, George speculated that only offering a carbon model for so many years has only benefited the Aspero. It’s also unique with its more race-oriented geometry and design. That appeals to more performance-focused riders, who tend to be willing to spend more. 

Salsa impressed by getting two bikes into the top 5. “I am always surprised by how well both the Warbird and the Cutthroat hold their value,” George commented. “The Cutthroat especially given we get some older ones sometimes.” Both the Warbird and Cutthroat are well-respected bikes with cult-like followings. The Warbird was the original gravel race bike, while the Cutthroat is one of the most popular bike-packing platforms on the market.  

The Specialized Diverge is out of the top 5, but again, it’s worth mentioning that it is our biggest seller by volume (the same goes for the Checkpoint). Many low-end aluminum versions don’t hold value as well as the high-end carbon versions, so it’s impressive that it stays strong despite such a wide range of offerings within a single model. 

“I thought Moots deserved a shout-out too,” said George. “If we were to consider the greatest average sale price, they are the clear winner, averaging over $5800. This is even more impressive since a few of these were fairly old models compared to the other bikes on this list. The Average Sale % of MSRP isn't as high because they're so expensive. But once you get past the initial depreciation from ‘driving it off the lot,’ they hold their value really well.” We’ve found this to be true of many high-end titanium brands, including Mosaic, No. 22, and Firefly.   

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