What Are They Worth?

A good RS250 is likely to cost between £9000 and £10,000. You can expect to pay the higher figure or possibly even slightly more for an immaculate, low-mileage standard bike with a recent engine refresh; the lower mark or a bit less for a machine with a few more miles (much over 20,000 is high mileage by RS standards), has non-standard pipes or other parts, and hasn’t been run recently so is likely to require work.

An NSR250R of similar vintage and quality is likely to cost almost twice as much, especially if it’s in the test bike’s upmarket SE or higher still SP specification. “Prices have been rising and good MC28s [the later, single-sided swing-arm model] are worth about £20,000 these days,” says Kevin Mitchell, who runs Preston-based small stroker specialist Fastline Superbikes (www.fastline.co.uk) with his brother and fellow ex-racer Gary.

That’s for the top-spec SP model; at the time of writing Fastline had a very tidy, 12,000-mile SP on sale at £19,899. “The SE wouldn’t be worth much less because there’s not much difference between the two, just magnesium wheels and the adjustable suspension,” said Kevin. The standard NSR250R is less valuable again, though still worth up to £15,000 in top condition.

The earlier MC21 model, with twin-sided Gull Arm swing-arm, is worth a similar amount in SP form – a nice example in Pentax colours was recently being advertised privately at £13,500. If you don’t mind more age and mileage, a 1989-model MC18, the SP version in classy silver/white Terra Racing colours, was advertised at just under £10,000. And if the standard NSR is sufficiently exotic, a clean MC21 was on eBay at £6995.