Century Yachts for Sale

Century is one of the oldest names in American boatbuilding and has been through more owners than most. The brothers James and William Welch started it in Milwaukee in 1926 building wooden plank hulls for speed, moved to Manistee, Michigan in 1928, and were up to a thousand boats a year by 1930 and 28 models by 1937. The war brought a contract for 3,600 vessels and the Army Navy E award. The automobile stylist Richard Arbib gave the late 1950s boats their fins and chrome, a fashion that later hurt resale. Century changed from wood to fiberglass in 1967, opened a Panama City, Florida plant in 1983 and built its last Manistee boat in 1985. Yamaha bought the company in 1995, Allcraft Marine of Florida bought it in 2012, Sorfam Capital took a controlling interest in 2020, and after All Craft Marine sought creditor protection in 2025 the operation passed to American Nautical Holdings at Zephyrhills, Florida. The brand's own site now says only that new owners and a new chapter arrive with the centenary in 2026.

Three different Centurys trade second hand and they have almost nothing to do with each other. The Manistee wooden boats, runabouts and utilities from the 1920s to the 1960s, are collector property: buy them through people who know antique and classic boats, and expect the value to sit in originality and in how the wood has been kept. The Yamaha and Allcraft era fiberglass fishing boats, roughly 20 to 32 feet as center consoles, dual consoles, walkarounds and cuddies with models such as the 2300, 2400, 2600 and 3200 center consoles and the 24 Resorter, are ordinary used fishing boats and should be priced as such. What ties all of them together is that there is no settled factory behind the name right now. Until the new ownership is trading properly, assume no warranty support and no guaranteed parts channel, buy on condition and survey, and treat any claim about factory backing as something to confirm in writing.