It's only fairly recently that mountain biking has been old enough to have a sense of its own history, but it's certainly getting into its stride now. Old stuff from the 80s and early 90s can command substantial sums, with plenty of collectors duking it out for the rare stuff (and with plenty of "boutique" products from that era being notably fragile, a lot of it is now rarer than it was).
Recently finished on eBay, though, is a particularly startling example - a carbon fiber/chromoly Yeti C-26 frame that sold for a breathtaking $12,211, or just over £7,000.
The C-26 is undoubtedly something of an iconic bike for all sorts of reasons. While carbon fibre is everywhere today, in 1990 this was pioneering stuff. And of course being the race bike of choice for John Tomac and Juli Furtado lends the C-26 a certain cachet. C-26s are also spectacularly rare, with no more than a dozen being built by Yeti (although Easton delivered 50 tubesets, and a number of those have since been assembled with varying levels of success - we featured Mike Wilks's excellent example a little while back).
While the provenance of this one is uncertain, those in the know believe it to be an original. It's pretty tatty-looking, and there's evidence of some rebonding of tubes, but a C-26 is the Holy Grail for many collectors so the price isn't entirely unsurprising. A lot for an old frame, certainly, but compared to some stuff that people collect it's peanuts.
Rumour has it that the same bidder also scored a pair of (even rarer) carbon fibre Accutrax fork legs. Whoever it is, they ought to be rolling a quite impressive bike in a few months...
