2023 Sun Tracker Party Barge 20 DLX — East Bethel, MN

A 2023 Sun Tracker Party Barge 20 DLX at East Bethel, Minnesota, asking $27,995 through Boat World MN. Sun Tracker has built pontoons under the Tracker Marine roof since 1983, and the Party Barge is the volume end of that trade: package boats made to a price. The 20 DLX joined the line in 2018 and is still built: a three-year-old example of a current boat, 21.9 ft overall on 8.5 ft of beam.

Two honesty notes. We hold no second Party Barge 20 DLX, so there is no sister to price this against — we cannot say whether $27,995 is keen or dear. And our record carries no engine, hours or trailer; on a package pontoon that is most of the money. Ask first.

What the shelf places is the trade. Near this price it is the newest boat we hold by five years and the shortest by two feet; the rest of the band runs five to forty years older and up to twelve feet longer. You are buying age, not size — the cheap, shallow, sociable corner of the powerboat shelf.

The one other pontoon we hold is the premium end of the same idea — a 2022 Barletta Cabrio 22UC in Michigan, a year older and $27,005 more:

Where the opposite instinct leads is fiberglass: a 2008 Sea Ray 260 Sundeck at Bradenton asks exactly the same $27,995 — six more feet of hull, fifteen more years of it:

Split it the other way and the 2014 Monterey 214 SS at Bayville lands $5,058 under this boat, six years newer than the Sea Ray:

Both sit on our bowriders under $50k shelf. But if the brief is a crowd on a flat deck in fresh water, nothing else here does this job — this is the one to survey first: