In a cog-removal thread, a really interesting question has been raised about the price of a used Rohloff gearbox. The "normative case" in the title of this thread is the condition that should in theory prevail; here it's a sort of economist's irony.
I think I probably paid too much for the [used Rohloff] unit but, hey ho, as long as it works, I'm okay with that.
To give you some perspective: You can get a used, working, Rohloff for about £500-£600, most commonly in Germany, but those have generally been through some mud plugger's backside, and you can see it in the photos.
Whatever you paid, you've got it now, so yours above is probably the best attitude. Sir Frederick Royce said, "The value of a thing will please long after the price is forgotten."
Anybody have an inclination as to how much an 11 year old, low usage, Rohloff should sell for?
Actually, I'd go further than Paul goes here:
If you know it [the Rohloff gearbox] hasn't had much use, I'd have thought it worth not much less than the original cost, if it was still on its first sprocket I'd consider it just run in.
My Rohloff box is older than yours, from 2006, but what matters is the mileage and the condition, not age. On considering your conundrum, I've decided that anyone who wants my Rohloff would have to pay a premium over new, so it would cost him probably more than small change in excess of a thousand pounds.
How do I arrive at this startling conclusion? Consider these facts:
1. Rohloffs have no MTBF (mean time between failure) because, with many Rohloffs now over 20 years old, and many well over a 100,000 of either kilometers or miles, there have been too few breakages to establish a pattern. It's clearly a reliable box you will leave to your grandchildren. So a low mileage, say sub-10,000km/6000m Rohloff box is just run in. The useful life of a Rohloff is unknown, but conservatively assumed to be well on the far side of 200,000 miles, for practical purpose infinite.
2. However, if a Rohloff, which is assembled by hand rather than mass-produced, is likely to break, it will usually break within a few thousand kilometers; virtually all other breakages (so few that most of them are individually known) happen under continual adverse conditions such as loaded touring in places where civilization is a firing squad offense. So a low-mileage but run-in Rohloff (check the appearance of the casing) is virtually guaranteed to escape the inconvenience of returning it to Germany for repair.
3. A Rohloff hub gearbox is a piece of agricultural German machinery, never intended to be a refined touring gearbox for well-off cyclists. As a consequence it takes a long time to run in. (Chalo Colina, a famous Boeing toolmaker and bike mechanic -- the designer of Aaron's 48-spoke Rohloff shell -- and the owner of several well-used Rohloffs, once said, "A Rohloff starts to be run-in when a Shimano hub gearbox lies down and dies." Actually, two Shimano Nexus gearboxes died on me well before my Rohloff was run-in.) During this extended running-in period of the Rohloff the lower range is a bit noisier, and the gear change much stiffer, than on a well-run-in Rohloff, which by contrast is utterly silent and quite as smooth-changing as the Shimano (which is a noted smooth-changing box if it is well set up).
So any lucky person who bought my Rohloff box would be able to:
a) avoid the careful listening for expensive crunches, and the relatively stiff gear change control for several thousand miles;
b) because the box is just run in, be virtually guaranteed that the box doesn't suffer from the very rare hand-assembly glitches that new owners worry about unnecessarily but quite understandably;
c) know that very little (less than 3%) of the useful life of the gearbox has been consumed;
d) as a consequence be able to ride his new Rohloff with careless abandon.
All of that, I reckon, is worth a stiff premium over the current new price. Another way of looking at it is that I would have to break in another Rohloff, and the wear and tear on my peace of mind is worth something to me, and the absence of that wear and tear on himself should be worth something to the second owner of a well-run-in Rohloff. All that remains is to agree a number for this signal service.