2023 Cobalt CS23 — Branson, MO

A 2023 Cobalt CS23 at Branson, Missouri, asking $78,500 through The Harbor. Cobalt has built at Neodesha, Kansas since 1968 on one argument — keep the work in-house, from metalwork to upholstery, and the boat holds its money afterwards — and the CS23 is that argument at its smallest useful size: a 23-foot sterndrive bowrider, trailerable, drawn to carry a family for a day without asking for a slip. Our record puts the model into production in 2022: this hull is second-year, effectively current.

Two honesty notes. We hold no second CS23, so there is no sister to price this one against; what follows reads across the bowrider shelf, not the model. And we have not surveyed it — hours, drive and trailer are the broker's to state.

The position is plain. The bowriders we set beside it run $19,900 to $120,000 with a median of $49,900, and only one asks more than this boat. At roughly $3,400 a foot you pay for near-new, from a yard whose resale reputation is real, in the years depreciation is steepest. The cheap end of this type lives on the bowriders under $50k shelf; the wider ladder is powerboats.

The same badge four feet longer is the first door: a 2016 Cobalt R7 at Sag Harbor, $84,000 — $5,500 more for a bigger boat seven years older.

Where the opposite instinct leads, a 2021 Chaparral 21 SSI outboard at Sebastian, Florida keeps most of the near-new premium and drops $23,000.

And if 23 feet is the constraint rather than the brief, the 2019 Regal 29 OBX at Metairie, Louisiana is the upgrade this shelf offers — six more feet at the top of the range.

But if a current-generation 23-footer from Neodesha is the brief, this is the one to survey first: