Buying&Selling Knives Online?

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boy&hisdogs

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Is it realistically possible for someone to make a little bit of side money buying and selling commercial knives online? I'm a college student with odd pockets of free time here and there. Not enough to sit down and hand-make something, but I might have the time to buy and sell on ebay, amazon, etsy, etc. I already drive all over town most days for school and work so stopping by the post office would be nothing to me, and I do have a real job so I have some flex money to play around with.

I like pocket knives too much just to simply carry one and that be the end of it, but I don't have the money to collect or the time to make (although that is the dream! :D) and I'd like to find some way to get more involved and make my hobby work for me, even if it's just a few Bucks at a time... heh, get it? Bucks? :o

Speaking of "Bucks", I think the scariest thing about the knife market is the obscene amount of fakes out there! :eek: I was googling this subject prior to posting and it's just plain ridiculous! Did you guys know that you can get "authentic" Ox horn AKC switchblades direct from China for $20 a piece? :rolleyes: Heck, even knives that actually sell for twenty or thirty dollars have their own Chinese fakes! The absolute LAST thing I would ever want to do is scam someone, even by accident. :thumbdn:
 
I would say chances are you will lose money by flipping knives. Just take a look at the knives being sold here at the Exchange (i.e., sale prices vs dealer prices). That said, buying and selling knives certainly makes it possible for you to try out much more knives (assuming you are on a budget).
 
As the saying goes, you "make money when you buy". So if you can buy right, you can make money. But it is easier said than done. Good luck.
 
You can do that sort of thing, and I have with other things. But you really have to have a very good idea what things are selling for to tell if something is a bargain to buy. I used to occasionally buy and sell fairly niche items because not a lot of people knew their market value, but buyers looking for one did. It also helps if you are willing to sit on stuff.

The flip side is that postage, ebay, paypal, forum and other fees can really eat any profit. So figure out where you're going to sell before you start.
 
You will probably not make profit buying and reselling on here. However, I've made some cash buying off craigslist, pawn shops, and even some gun stores, and reselling on here at a good price.
 
And don't be the guy who starts a thread or has a buddy start one hyping up some discontinued knife and magically have one for sale a short time later.
 
considering most online large retailers are willing to make a nickel per knife in order to turn volume and honestly.... you can't compete. It'll cost you more to box the item for shipping than someone else is willing to make on the same item leaving you with zero profit margin.....

IF I were interested in doing what you are talking about doing.... I'd look for recently discontinued models that can still be bought, special editions and sprint runs, buy as many as you can afford and start monitoring prices.... once they kinda peak out.... flip your stock.

FOR EXAMPLE........ I'd have loaded up on recently discontinued BK4s, BK15s, BK5s.....these are all well loved and well respected knives that WILL be in demand for years after current stock has depleted.

I'd have picked up as many of Cold Steels AUS8 blades as they got replaced with the new and more expensive CTS steel versions... voyagers will always sell...and buying them at half price due to being discontinued, then selling them for much more to folks who just prefer the AUS8 steel versions later on...

The down side to all this is you are going to have to buy knives you don't want.... and sit on em for perhaps years waiting on the value to peak... it'll be very easy to loose more money than you'll ever make by buying too deep into the wrong stock.... like anything else in life man, once it quits being something you just do cause you love it.... it'll loose its coolness VERY fast.

G'luck....
 
Ah jeez I guess I should have known that this would be harder than simply buying a 10-pack of something and selling each one for 5 or 10 bucks profit. :(

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I have bought new and resold around 40 knives - made money (less than $ 30.00) with 3 of them. Most in the $70.00 to $ 160.00 range and one in the $ 300.00 range. Lost money or broke even on all but the 3. A big factor is that you need to add S&H cost and PP fees to send them to a new home. Nearly all of these were like new with box and papers or pristine/new. No matter there has never been any money for me in reselling knives.

E-bay is even worse as a profit center because of their fee structure which quickly tanks any chance at a profit UNLESS you are selling something rare that can be authenticated as genuine - then you have a chance. The fake thing is real enough to make thinking people cautious. I like using the BF exchange because here everyone knows the values and the score of buying 2nd hand knives. Cheaters and scammers get weeded out very fast. Still - I repeat - not much chance of making money doing this.

Your user Benchmade - you might sell for $ 100.00 delivered. Good luck but stay in school young man and get a part time job as a waiter :)
 
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boy&hisdogs said:
I actually do have one knife I want to sell though. A Benchmade 741, I know they were expensive (I think my specific one was like 170ish new) and people are asking quite a bit for them on Ebay. Mine was EDC'd though. No real damage, but it does have some pocket wear and tiny nicks in the blade, no box or paperwork.

What would be the best way to sell this thing? I don't want to sit on it too long, I just want fair market value for it sooner rather than later. Should I get it professionally sharpened first? Is this something people would be interested in as a "user" or is this just a collector's piece that people only want NIB? This seems like something that would be better off sold on a forum or as "buy it now", I think it's a little too niche for a regular auction.
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With all respect, this aspect of the discussion shouldn't be happening...it is against the rules for a "Registered User" (your membership level) to ask about the value of your knives or discuss selling them.
 
hhmoore said:
With all respect, this aspect of the discussion shouldn't be happening...it is against the rules for a "Registered User" (your membership level) to ask about the value of your knives or discuss selling them.
Click to expand...

Oops, sorry about that. Post edited.
 
IMHO, the issue is time. The way you would be able to make any decent money would be to find knives selling below market somewhere, then reselling them at market prices. But finding them takes a LOT of time. When I first got into knives, I literally spent hours every day looking at knives on every site I could find, including gun forums, flashlight forums, military forums, etc.

Because I was spending so much time looking at knives, I would occasionally run into knives for sale at a below-market price, so I could buy it and resell it at market. I only did this a couple of times, and it would have been a money loser if you consider the time involved, but I was obsessing over knives anyway, not spending hours a day online looking for a knife to flip.

Good luck to you either way.
 
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