How should Collector Knives sell GEC SFO's

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Thank you for the explanation Mike. Do what’s easiest and best for you, you have a lot more to worry about than this. (I believe I said this same thing 30 pages ago LOL).

The lottery was fun but I can see how people that normally got a knife, and now didn’t, would be upset. I can also see how people who could never get a knife were happy that they had much more of a chance this time. Oh well, at least you tried!

Thank you for going the extra mile.
 
The lottery was great because it gave me a chance (I lost) to get in on a reserve that would never have happened otherwise.

I refuse to use any type of social media so it looks like this may have been my last chance to get a 77 barlow directly from CK. WHOOOAAAAA IS MEEEEEE!!!!!!! :)
 
Ramrodmb said:
It is weird but the recent 77 lotto seemed to have the unintended effect of driving the secondary price up, substantially.
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I agree, that it was unintended, but it was also completely predictable. As I see it the main problem is flipping. Which causes the mad, blind rush to purchase and the ridiculous surge in secondary market asking prices.

Flippers being shut out by the CK Lottery decended upon the KSF drop. The knife I attempted to buy dissapeared from my cart. Only to quickly reappear on an auction site at a substanially inflated price; unfortunate. The process as it stands now leaves a bad tast in my mouth. Just letting off steam, as I have no idea of how to proceed to a realistic fix. Hoping there is one.
 
Lol, so now the lottery Mike tried is the cause for the NW knives popping up on eBay at inflated prices hours after they were all purchased?? Kinda like comparing apples to tomatoes.

That has been happening for a long while. No matter what is tried by dealers, there isn’t one smoking gun option to appease everyone.
 
I'm no economist, but it seems there will be flippers as long as demand exceeds supply. And as long as supply is locked in (which it should be), some people will be unhappy when missing out by chance or because of price.
 
Jsega51 said:
Lol, so now the lottery Mike tried is the cause for the NW knives popping up on eBay at inflated prices hours after they were all purchased?? Kinda like comparing apples to tomatoes.

That has been happening for a long while. No matter what is tried by dealers, there isn’t one smoking gun option to appease everyone.
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Nope, Mike isn't the cause, but it's not hard to figure that if one source drys up flippers will move to the next available one. And they seem to have done that with a vengance. In my particular case it wasn't hours after the drop ended, it was minutes.
 
I think, maybe, just pontificating here, that if the next time CK gets to run the 77 Barlow, Mike goes with 1 or 2 cover choices, it may well go a long way to meeting demand. I'm not as fast as some, so I liked the lottery, and felt I had the same fair chance at scoring as everyone else. Of course, easy for me to say, I reckon, I did get a reserve on the Elderberry, which I will certainly treasure.

When the TC Barlow was relegated to one or two covers, it became much easier to get (although I still missed that peachseed clip!), and secondary market prices seemed to come down a bit, at least on those variants.

As someone said a few pages ago, a making the forum knife a NF Barlow would be sweet, :), however unlikely. This would get a barlow in a lot of forum member's hands. In any case, we are lucky to have Collector Knives! Thank you, Knifeswapper!
 
Lowering the number of cover varieties makes them less collectible also. And what if the one or two covers he chooses are not ones you are interested in?

It's a trade off. I like the variety and the low number of various GECs available. I like that GEC publishes the yearly production totals so you can see how many of a certain knife was made.

That adds to the fun of collecting them. Like, a fellow on a FB group who has 2 of the 3 #253110EO with Smooth White Bone covers that were made. That's pretty neat (and he's actively searching for the third, let me know if you have it :P )

I'd rather have a chance at a knife that was 1 of a 100 than a guarantee of a 1 of 500 knife.
 
Norcaldude said:
Lowering the number of cover varieties makes them less collectible also. And what if the one or two covers he chooses are not ones you are interested in?

It's a trade off. I like the variety and the low number of various GECs available. I like that GEC publishes the yearly production totals so you can see how many of a certain knife was made.

That adds to the fun of collecting them. Like, a fellow on a FB group who has 2 of the 3 #253110EO with Smooth White Bone covers that were made. That's pretty neat (and he's actively searching for the third, let me know if you have it :p )

I'd rather have a chance at a knife that was 1 of a 100 than a guarantee of a 1 of 500 knife.
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I can understand the appeal of low production numbers to collectors. For folks wanting these knives to use, I can understand wanting bigger production numbers to make them easier to obtain. In some ways, GEC is doing a pretty good job of meeting both demands. While the Barlows are very difficult to come by, regular #15s and #77s are, for the most part, attainable.
 
knifeswapper knifeswapper

Hi Mike,

Curious to know if you decided how Charlie's upcoming 15's will be sold on your site. Looking back at the postings I'm guessing a reserve will be dropped unannounced? Just wanting to know so I can try to get one.

I'm guessing there will be no individual images of the 77 barlow for the lottery winners to choose from. Just curious how that will work. I'm guessing it will be a basic receipt of invoice and ship purchase versus choosing from individual knives?

Thank you!
 
PirateSeulb said:
cbr1000 cbr1000 there is already an early reserve for 2 15 variants not sure if thats the ones you are referring to or not.
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There was several more added to the production schedule. I was curious if Mike is even going to offer a reserve on these because it seems like the Barlow's have been a huge hassle. Maybe he hasn't decided yet. I would like to know so I can stop refreshing the CK reserve site
 
cbr1000 said:
There was several more added to the production schedule. I was curious if Mike is even going to offer a reserve on these because it seems like the Barlow's have been a huge hassle. Maybe he hasn't decided yet. I would like to know so I can stop refreshing the CK reserve site
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I know the feeling, I was curious about this myself when the new Production Schedule was announced. I don't envy the choices Mike has to make in regards to this and I certainly won't be blaming him for anything, regardless of what he decides to do. Realistically, I do not have the time or energy to constantly be refreshing his site, not to mention the issues that can be created on the backend with hundreds of people doing the same. I also recognize that as soon as someone announces the drop, my chances become rather slim at being able to secure one amidst the stampede.

I have really liked the Ancient TC Barlows from the moment I set my eyes on them and I feel one with a spear point would really epitomize everything I would value in a small Barlow. I am pretty eager to see what the cover choices will be... A glimmer of hope for everyone though. After last year's TC releases, there were plenty to be found on the secondary market for prices that were not at all unreasonable, especially after the hype had passed and the flippers had taken their pound of flesh already. That was how I landed one in Ebony.
 
Pàdruig said:
I know the feeling, I was curious about this myself when the new Production Schedule was announced. I don't envy the choices Mike has to make in regards to this and I certainly won't be blaming him for anything, regardless of what he decides to do. Realistically, I do not have the time or energy to constantly be refreshing his site, not to mention the issues that can be created on the backend with hundreds of people doing the same. I also recognize that as soon as someone announces the drop, my chances become rather slim at being able to secure one amidst the stampede.

I have really liked the Ancient TC Barlows from the moment I set my eyes on them and I feel one with a spear point would really epitomize everything I would value in a small Barlow. I am pretty eager to see what the cover choices will be... A glimmer of hope for everyone though. After last year's TC releases, there were plenty to be found on the secondary market for prices that were not at all unreasonable, especially after the hype had passed and the flippers had taken their pound of flesh already. That was how I landed one in Ebony.
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There are too many good knives for my income to justify. I'm going to start praying that other Bladeforums regulars get at least one of each so that I can enjoy looking at nice pictures of them all!
 
Pàdruig said:
I know the feeling, I was curious about this myself when the new Production Schedule was announced. I don't envy the choices Mike has to make in regards to this and I certainly won't be blaming him for anything, regardless of what he decides to do. Realistically, I do not have the time or energy to constantly be refreshing his site, not to mention the issues that can be created on the backend with hundreds of people doing the same. I also recognize that as soon as someone announces the drop, my chances become rather slim at being able to secure one amidst the stampede.

I have really liked the Ancient TC Barlows from the moment I set my eyes on them and I feel one with a spear point would really epitomize everything I would value in a small Barlow. I am pretty eager to see what the cover choices will be... A glimmer of hope for everyone though. After last year's TC releases, there were plenty to be found on the secondary market for prices that were not at all unreasonable, especially after the hype had passed and the flippers had taken their pound of flesh already. That was how I landed one in Ebony.
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I agree. The irony for me is I didn't like the lottery concept from the start to finish, but now I appreciate the convenience it would offer on the 15 run. As I'm thinking about it, a lottery may increase my chances of getting one of the CC 15's because I'm guessing the production volume will not be as high as the barlow's - without the lottery it will be luck of the draw to get one... with a lot more work to do it... and they will be gone in a flash.

As far as your comment about the secondary TC market on the last run - I agree too, but wanted to add that it didn't last long. Seemed like there was a lot available at decent prices initially and after about 6-8 months they jumped up in price.
 
I like that Mike is doing some SFO models by lottery. I did not get drawn, but at least i had a chance.

I also like the hunt of waiting for a special run to appear on another dealers website.

I have had great luck buying from at least 5 GEC dealers, including Mike, and all have been great to buy from.

There is room for different approaches to the sale of these limited production pocket knives, and we should all feel lucky to be able to own just a few of these nice products.
 
knifeswapper said:
All future high demand reserves will be unannounced placement on the ERS with no additional limitations. Easy for me.
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So no text or email notification at all? Interesting. You'll have higher daily visits to your site, I'd bet.

knifeswapper said:
They can't. That puts 500+ people on the site within 20-30 seconds and it WILL crash. It came close last week with just @200 on the #46, #15, and #44 announcement (I should have staggered them). That was the main reason for the search for another solution to begin with. So, by not announcing them, the traffic will be distributed as people find them or at least until announcements start trickling in to social media platforms. I don't like it, but at this point I have exhausted my attempts to find an alternative.

It is funny, because I thought I could just use some other system to take names, like the RandomPicker site. So the first giveaway test we did I intentionally had about 250 people hit within a few seconds to enter their email on the commercial website for RandomPicker and it hung their system up for a couple minutes. Their commercial server, made for this function alone, could not handle half the traffic I am trying to find a solution. So, I worked with a developer for a couple weeks and come up with the simple form on my own new platform. But collecting names, enforcing rules, begging forgiveness when enforcing said rules, and taking the chewing I took when someone was not drawn - is simply not worth it.

If I can figure out something else that will work for all involved, I will implement it. But at this point I am a couple thousand dollars into a solution that only got people more angry - and I'm exhausted.
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I can see how trying to do a lottery for all these high demand runs would be a real pain. I don't mind the idea of just throwing them up on the ERS.

Norcaldude said:
Lowering the number of cover varieties makes them less collectible also. And what if the one or two covers he chooses are not ones you are interested in?

It's a trade off. I like the variety and the low number of various GECs available. I like that GEC publishes the yearly production totals so you can see how many of a certain knife was made.

That adds to the fun of collecting them. Like, a fellow on a FB group who has 2 of the 3 #253110EO with Smooth White Bone covers that were made. That's pretty neat (and he's actively searching for the third, let me know if you have it :p )

I'd rather have a chance at a knife that was 1 of a 100 than a guarantee of a 1 of 500 knife.
Click to expand...

I believe Bill Howard keeps one of every knife they make. I could be mistaken though.
 
cbr1000 said:
Curious to know if you decided how Charlie's upcoming 15's will be sold on your site.

I'm guessing there will be no individual images of the 77 barlow for the lottery winners to choose from.
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Undecided on Charlie's runs, may just run them all on eBay ;)

I'm not taking 1500 pictures and 50 hours to post them on the website. May sound a little selfish - but I am at 100% capacity around here (at least for on old fat man).
 
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