Knuckle Head for sale.

[Barry Boy]

I was reading a very old copy of Back Street Hero's (1990) and was looking at the for sales page when came across an add for a restored Knuckle at the price of ?5,500. Oh for a time machine and a pile of old currency.

Thing is that was almost 30 years ago and what with wage increases how would that look today. So a quick look on HMRC site shows that the average 2018 UK wage is ?23-25K so now you could reasonably 3/4 of one with a years wages.

However the average wage for 1990 was ?13K so in theory and all things being equal like condition back in 1990 you could have bought two.

So in thirty years the price has more than doubled which is about what I would have thought.

 

[Paul P.]

Re: Knuckle Head for sale.

This might be a good moment to recount a story I was sharing with a fellow member today down at the Pioneer Run. When I joined the club (1974) people were buying Forty-fives because they couldn't afford a Sportster - it wasn't far off how people fairly recently were buying the Varese two-strokes. Anyway, back in 1980 Fred Warr built himself a beautiful Forty-five out of NOS parts and the "best of the rest". It was his personal mount and he kept it in the old 611 Kings Road shop and to stop people bothering him about it he put ?5,000 on it. This was when ?2,000 would buy you a concours one, maybe even buy a tired knuckle? Anyway, one day someone walks in and slaps the five grand down and as word got out Forty-fives (and the spares) rocketed in price. We had the bike (while Fred still owned it) on a club stand at a London classic bike show and it won a prize (1st?) - I will look out a photo of it.
(for our overseas readers, Fred began Britains oldest dealership and is membership number eleven!)