Grady White

What Grady-White is on the used market

Grady-White is the benchmark for production saltwater fishing boats: family-owned, built in Greenville NC, and consistently top-ranked in owner-satisfaction surveys for decades. Used Gradys trade on reputation and documentation — the market rewards service records more than any other brand we track, because the buyer pool is experienced saltwater owners who know exactly what deferred maintenance costs.

Supply is structurally tight. Owners keep these boats long and sell into a waiting market, so genuine bargains are rare; the realistic goal is paying fair value for a documented hull, not finding a steal.

Known issues to inspect

The Grady+Yamaha pairing is near-universal from the late 1990s on, and the engines are the inspection focus: pull Yamaha service history (dealers can run the full record), verify 100-hour services, and on F-series four-strokes from the mid-2000s check for documented exhaust corrosion remediation where applicable.

On the hulls, check the SeaV2 hull's bottom paint history for poorly maintained trailer boats kept in the water, transom condition on bracket-mounted models, and fuel tank age — aluminum tanks foamed in place are reaching replacement age on 1990s boats, a $4K–8K job.

Resale and value character

Gradys are the closest thing to a blue-chip in used saltwater boats: the resale curve is shallow, liquidity is excellent, and a documented Yamaha-powered example recovers most of its purchase price over a 3–5 year hold. That is exactly why a correctly priced one should be moved on quickly — they do not sit.