What is your boat worth? (in 1988)

While exploring an abandon woodie on the block at a lien sale recently we came across an interesting publication. The buyer of the boat gave us the book as one less thing to toss from his "prize". The title of the book: "BUC used boat price guide, 1905 to 1970 models including Antiques and Classics" Old hands around the marina are probably familiar with this book, but it was a curiosity to me. This particular issue was dated "1988/Winter-Spring". Anyone familiar with the Kelly Blue Book will recognize this type of publication. It is a compilation of boats for sale by type and price for the season listed. Unlike the Kelly it appears not to reflect actual selling prices as reported by brokers.

Wandering throughout the book is a fun read, but as you might imagine the Kettenburg listing drew our immediate attention. We have reproduced that particular section here. We've enlarged the copy so as to be able to read it as the book itself is issued with very small type The book is about an inch thick, 5 inches wide and 11 inches tall, with a green cover. I called the 800 number on the book to see if the publisher, BUCresearch, answered the phone. They didn't. If you know of anything about this publication, have a collection of copies, know when they stopped publishing or have other knowledge about this aspect of the boating world, please give us a hollar.

Posted 08/20/01

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