2008 Sea Ray Sea Ray 260 Sundeck — Bradenton, Florida 34202

A 2008 Sea Ray 260 Sundeck at Bradenton, Florida, asking $27,995 through popsells.com — one hull, carried by two brokers. The design is a deckboat: 26.33 ft on a trailerable 8.5 ft beam, built 2007 to 2014; this hull is early in that run. Sea Ray's signature on the type is freeboard — more than deckboats usually carry, so the wide bow lounges stay usable when a chop gets up — drawn around a single sterndrive, a walkthrough transom and an extended swim platform. A day boat, not a cruiser.

Two honesty notes. We hold no second 260 Sundeck, so there is no sister to price this ask against. And we carry nothing on its condition, hours or days on market — we have not surveyed this boat.

What the shelf does place is the price. It is the oldest hull in our bowrider comparison by four years, and only two boats ask less — a 2016 Chaparral H2O at $19,900 and a 2014 Monterey 214 SS at $22,937 — both shorter by four to five feet and newer by six to eight. Above 22 feet nothing is near it: the next cheapest asks $21,905 more. Length for years, then — the low end of the bowriders under $50k shelf, near the bottom of the powerboat ladder.

That rival is the 2015 Rinker 276 Captiva at Antioch, Illinois — two feet longer, seven years newer:

Where the opposite instinct leads is smaller and newer — the 2014 Monterey 214 SS at Bayville, New Jersey:

And if finish rather than footage is the buy, the 2016 Cobalt R7 at Sag Harbor asks three times the money for one more foot:

But if a 26-foot deckboat under $30,000 is the brief, nothing else here does it — survey this one first: