What would be a good price?

Someone I work with has a '95 two seater and '96 three seater Sea Doo for sale on one trailer. Neither have been ran for the past two summer and I'm sure both need tune ups and maybe a little maintenance. He says to make an offer, but I have no idea what jet skiis sell for (I'm a boat guy). I don't want to overbid, but I don't want to insult the guy either. Rough guess on what these are worth?

Re: What would be a good price?

In excellent shape they may be worth 4500$. Since they havent run in a while I can tell you a carb rebuild woudl be needed and pump oil changes at the minimum. i woudl look at compression shoudl be 150 PSI or so anything less than abotu 140 you need a rering. The psi shoudl be pretty close between the cylinders. It woudl also depend on the area you live in. Cali texas and Florida are pretty year round riding weather IMO so prices are slightly higher. but 3800-4500 is a fair price but yo ugotta make a judgement on how they look and what kind of $$ youll have to put into them to get them rinning right
Rob

Re: What would be a good price?

find the exact models and look them up on NADA used boat values on the internet make an offer means he has no clue of what they are worth either so start at 1000 each with 250 for the trailer

Re: What would be a good price?

Thanks guys I appreciate it.

Re: What would be a good price?

Gotta remember that whiel the season is starting up peopel will demand more for their toys. But yeah it doesnt sound like he knows what theire worth. To tell you the truth The KBB doesnt mean crap IMO. the overall shape the ski is in makes more of a difference than what KBB says. my skis when i sold them i woudlnt let them go for less than 5700. it didnt matter to me that they only booked at 4500. they were really clean ( you could eat off the motors) no rust and no damage. everything was in 98% condition. I had some yahoos offer me basically nothing and I just laughed. i had this one guy who called every day upping his offer by 100$. i finally told him to stop calling and even if he met my price i woudlnt sell it to him.
Anyway make your own judgement on what the skis are worth. i wrote a write up on what to look for when purchasing a used jet ski. You can find it at the SBT web site in their tech tutorials section. The webmaster on there asked me if he can put it up there. I used to go to that site when I had my jet skis. its written by Raider 1110 or robraider. I cant remember which was my screen name back then
its pretty informative and shoudl give you a good idea on what to look for .

Re: What would be a good price?

since they will both need work I would go with what was said before.... $1000 each for the ski's and take a look at what type of trailer they have but I would not go more than $400 for it max.

at $750 - $1000 or less each you have some room to put some money into the skis and still be at a fair price. if they have sat for that long they will also need 2 new batteries which will be close to $80 right there, $20 to change pump oil, $8 spark plugs, $40 for good fresh oil and if you have to have the carbs cleaned that could be several hundred $$ each. I would do a compression check on each one first... the last thing you want to have to do is put a motor in them... also jack up the trailer and spin the tires to see if the bearings are any good and check wiring... at that age it may need new bearings.


People seem to thing if something has sat for years and years that it is a good thing when infact it can make things worse. you need to find out what was done to them before they were parked.

when you run them for the first time check all fuel and oil lines and pre mix the 1st tank at 50:1 with the oil injection full to be sure it is working.


for the most part when I purchase something like this I take the cost of everything that would need to be done to make the boat 100% and subtract that from the low end of what the boat is worth. and NEVER pay more than you could turn around and sell it for easily the next day. Remember the biggest POS can be cleaned up and made to look amazing.

If you feel the price you give him may be a bit insulting just write something up stating the cost of everything you will have to do to them with a total and justify your price… the last thing you want is to buy them and have to put far more into them than what they are worth just getting them running before you even hit the water.

Re: What would be a good price?

you can count on rebuilding all the carbs and totally cleaning out both fuel systems. if you don't do that you will regret it big time.
also the crank bearings could have rusted from sitting that long, even the cylinder walls could have rust on them. if the engines were fogged with fogging oil and the fuel systems were drained out before they were put up that could help but I highly doubt that was done