A ten-year-old Concept2 RowErg still sells for around seven hundred euro on Marktplaats. It cost €1.195 new. That is the whole argument for buying one, and it starts with money rather than fitness.
The RowErg is the rowing machine that gyms, boathouses and CrossFit boxes have run on for decades. A steel frame, a spinning flywheel in a cage, a nickel-plated chain and a handle on a bungee. Air is the resistance, so there is almost nothing to wear out and nothing proprietary to fail. The only electronic part is the PM5 monitor, and Concept2 sells it as a loose unit you clip on yourself. The chain, seat rollers, handle, bungee and flywheel bearings are all stock parts on Concept2's own shelf. Most cost a few euro. A machine from the 1990s takes today's monitor and rows like new.
This is why the resale market barely moves. Concept2 has built the same design for forty years, so a buyer in 2036 wants exactly the machine you own now. Depreciation is the tax you pay on things that go obsolete or fall apart. The RowErg does neither.
Set it against the folding magnetic rower that sells for around €150. Those run on a magnetic brake, sealed bearings and plastic folding joints. The resistance fades, the joints develop play, and within three or four years the machine is a coat rack worth nothing. You buy another. Over twenty years that is five machines and about €750. The resale value is zero every time.
| Over 20 years | Concept2 RowErg | €150 folding rower |
|---|---|---|
| Bought | €1.195 once | €150, five times |
| Total spent | €1.195 | €750 |
| Sold on after | around €700 | €0 |
| Net cost of ownership | around €495 | €750 |
The durable machine is the cheaper machine. It is also the one you keep using. Row three times a week for twenty years and the RowErg costs a couple of cents a session while holding most of its price the whole time.
There is a quieter dividend. A budget rower gets hidden in a spare room because it feels disposable. A disposable thing is easy to abandon. A machine that holds its value gets treated like an asset, kept in view and rowed. The one you could sell tomorrow for seven hundred euro is the one still under you a decade from now.
Verdict. €1.195 once for a rowing machine you resell for most of that a decade on, against €150 rebought five times for nothing.