I'm pretty much done buying knives

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knarfeng said:
land
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and gold , some other precious metals , gems ...maybe ? At least tend to hold their value , not make a real profit , per se .

I had to buy some very marginal land recently , and feel like I paid way too much . Don't expect to ever sell it at a profit .

Speculators can drive the price of anything to ridiculous levels . Unsustainable , IMO . 🧐

With few exceptions , knives are a poor investment for sure . But a fun hobby ! ;)
 
Wowbagger said:
Oh THAT I most certainly should not do !
nope nope
I've told myself to stop looking at the latest Spydercos to show up on amazon (for some reason can't stop until I see the Slym appear there) .
No don't tell me if it is in another store. I don't want to know . Just a game I am playing.

I did stumble across my Ken Onion Leek in Titanium handle and M390 reverse tanto blade that I just bought .
I am pretty darn happy about not fully stopping before I got that .
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This is what I do, if it doesn't show up on the exchange, I'm not interested.
 
Having something that makes you happy, is useful, needs very little upkeep, will outlive the owner, and can save your ass in many ways is hard to put a price on. I have started paring down what I own, only because I seem to be drawn to certain ones that seem to be ‘perfect’ for me.
 
JTR357 said:
It's such a terrible investment. There used to be a time 15-20 years ago when you got in a pinch & needed to make a few bucks, you'd get back 3/4 what you put into it. This applies to the big names too, like Busse, CRK, Hinderer & Strider. You'd be lucky to get half of what you paid for any of them these days, untouched, no cut no carry. Nothing holds its value anymore. They're worse than buying a new car & losing half the value driving it off the lot. I don't care about the new steels anymore or new designs. I'm just done. I have enough knives to last 100 lifetimes. I'm just going to keep what I have instead of practically giving them away. I'd rather give them away to my family when I die. Sorry to be a bummer but I'm just done with it all. I had a good run. 2002-2025. Rant over
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John I am sorry to hear that you have decided to stop collecting.

I hear you about the pricing but It sounds like something specific and unpleasant has happened which has led you to this decision?
 
I never though about knives as investments, I just wanted a good collection of tools and to familiarize myself with all the patterns, designs, steels, locks, handle materials through everyday use. Plus the few I bought for their beauty. By 2021 I accomplished this, so i restricted myself to two new knives per year and put all my disposable income into actual profit making investments.
 
edgelion said:
As someone coming back to the hobby in recent years, all I can say is that i am very dismayed by the inflation that I've seen, especially in the past few months. I really will not pay more than I think a knife is worth. I'm not sure how much markup there is, but I am sure that a lot of you have been overpaying for quite a long time and have been conditioned to simply accept it. Don't take that as an insult. This isn't me preaching about how others should spend their money, but a statement about how reluctant I am to squander mine (I buy dumb things, too). I do also recognize that the costs to make a knife have gone up, but the most noticeable price increases started before the pandemic. At least, that's when I started noticing.

I haven't even thought about resale value for myself. If times got hard, there are far more instantly sellable items in my possession to part with before I get to the cutlery. I doubt I would break even on any of them, and besides that, they are far more useful in a practical sense than most of the other stuff.
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This is it. I KNOW I have been overpaying for a long time. When I buy a knife for $400 & I decide I don't like it that much, I'll put it up here & I can't even get half of that. So, what I'm saying is I'm done buying new knives. On the rare occasion when I do buy again, it will be used. I'm not giving up the hobby, just the way I do it. I feel like I've wasted so much money on things that only I feel are valuable.
 
I feel you.... prices have become ridiculous. Sad but true... Unfortunately being where I am I have to buy new more often than not and that's expensive.

I am now in the 'just one more and I'm done' phase of my 30-year obsession.
 
BTW, I know I said 2002-2025, because that's when I started buying quality knives. I was interested in knives in my teens in the 80's & 90's but they were pretty much all crap; think BudK stuff.
 
JTR357 said:
It's such a terrible investment. There used to be a time 15-20 years ago when you got in a pinch & needed to make a few bucks, you'd get back 3/4 what you put into it. This applies to the big names too, like Busse, CRK, Hinderer & Strider. You'd be lucky to get half of what you paid for any of them these days, untouched, no cut no carry. Nothing holds its value anymore. They're worse than buying a new car & losing half the value driving it off the lot. I don't care about the new steels anymore or new designs. I'm just done. I have enough knives to last 100 lifetimes. I'm just going to keep what I have instead of practically giving them away. I'd rather give them away to my family when I die. Sorry to be a bummer but I'm just done with it all. I had a good run. 2002-2025. Rant over
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First off . . .I get it.

Now then: Why wait till you die? If you have a plethora of nice knives and a number of cherished family members, why not begin gifting out a few knives from time to time?

Christmas is coming and folks have birthdays. Any premium knife in pristine, new-in-the-box condition from another family member would be welcomed. That you have chosen that knife for that person is a poignant part of the gift. Part yf your joy in giving is selecting the right knife for the right person.

Doesn't have rot be a family member either. You know ow anyone in the military or a first responder . . .anyone who has a son or daughter who is?

In the early Y2K years as the "Global War on Terror" was ramping up, I went on a small binge and bought several Ek dagger and so on for young men I knew who had been in high school with our son and who were now in one or another branch of service. Such a gift to someone far off and in harms way is always appreciated.
 
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From what I have seen anything that people enjoy is subject to high prices and a "lack of value", simply because of the fact that people enjoy it and they are willing to pay.
A totally unrelated example, my wife like to sew, make jewelry and craft, but when you go to the hobby shops they charge so much for cloth, thread, beads, etc. that you can go buy clothes and such much cheaper than you can make them (years ago it didnt used to be that way). While it is fun to pursue a hobby, and healthy for us to have interests outside of work, it is rarely going to "make sense" financially to do so. If something is fun, someone is going to make you pay and try to make money off it. If something sucks, then generally you have to pay people to do it.
Years ago I briefly got into baseball cards because it was fun. Soon you realize everything people are selling is pure gold, and anything you have for sale is worthless, and that is what drove me away from that😏 I can see the same things at work in our hobby.
 
Similar to what Vorpel said, a knife that isn’t of huge value to you or on the secondary market can be a big deal to a child or even young adult. I have given a lot of my old stuff like Gerbers, crkt, kershaws, Swiss Army knives etc to friends kids and my nephews and neices . I usually give it to them in a box full of bandaids and explain that they will get cut and show them how to best avoid severe cuts using it.

My son got his first knife when he was 6, same as me. He is 10 now and uses it all the time.
 
I understand the OPs thought process. Though I am not sure agree about the state of the market. If a person buys a CRK at close to list price or an OZ or Keonig I think they would get about 75% of their value on the exchange provided the knife had been treated well and was presentable. I think that holds true in a way for Spyderco too depending on the model. The other stuff you might get about 1/2 of what you paid. My interests in the hobby have shifted to more of a high-end focus, but funding can be a challenge, so I will likely have to sell a few off at a bit of a loss to get what I want. All that said, when I sell a knife its an emotional process, sometimes I get butt hurt if the knife does not get the price I want. I kind of stopped selling for that reason. But I may just have to decide to sell a few soon and then fondle some at Bladeshow west. I have made about 10 knives in past year or so and given all but one away, that is a rewarding feeling. People really love getting handmade gifts.
 
Synov said:
Not all knives lose value, but the ones that don't are hard to get and they may not always coincide with your aesthetic preferences. Not losing money takes perseverance, pickiness, and luck. Just be more selective and you won't be disappointed. Or just accept that you are spending money purely for your own gratification.
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Knife collecting is a form of entertainment with some residual value. Whether that value is higher or lower than your initial investment depends on condition and your sales ability. Ask yourself, are you a better salesman than the guy you bought it from?

N2s
 
Many complaints here about “losing my a$$ when I sell”. Find me one person that lost money on a CPK sale. If they did, it was entirely their fault for underpricing their merchandise. Buy hard to get and desirable knives and then selling won’t be at a loss or hard to do. Plain Jane “whatever the retailers are stocking” buys tend to lose you money when you sell it down the road. In my experience, only Carothers hold its value and are knives I view as an investment, they also give me the best enjoyment out of all my cutlery.
 
The average yearly stock market return over the last 10 years (S&P 500) was > 14% / year. Over the last century, too. Meaning, for example, in 10 years you can grow $1000 to more than $4000. The house that my wife and me bought in 2002 and just sold, had almost quadrupled in value. Her wedding ring too, BTW.

It's not smart to look at knives as investment. Plus, it's a mirage, I'm convinced that people (even scalpers) do it due to the thrill/addiction of buying & selling. It takes a lot of time to wait for the right moment to buy a desirable knife, find the right place, push the buy button exactly at the right time, etc. And selling is just as addictive, the Ying and Yang of knife collecting .... I very much understand that selling and buying can get boring - it's not a good time investment either.

For me it's fun to use the different knives, think why they are what they are, where I got them, how I modified them, etc. Selling and buying by now is mostly too stressful. Also interesting how my tastes change, coming from folders to fixed blades, etc. In a market that changes, too. For example, when I started (2018), several of today's luxury brands did not exist.
 
Well said, Roland.

Vanguard is for investments.

BladeForums is for fun.

(And when you do the Vanguard part right, there's more money for knives, and less cause to worry about their rising or declining value. Win-Win.)
 
Back in the early Viet Nam War era, who could know that the first run of the Gerber Mk-II . . .the one with the "bent" blade, would now be worth many multiples of the few dollars they cost them at the PX in 1967?

The same could be said for the first version of the Viet Nam era USAF Pilots Survival Knife . . .the one I bought from a magazine in while in high school 1969 for under $5,and got rid of (literally discarded) in the 1980s. Mine came with a sheath that had no metal reinforcing at the tip.

I do not really know the market, but it is my precipitin that many Randall Made fixed blades hold up when compared to their original purchase price.. The MSRP for new RM knives continues to rise, so the previously owned knives face that inflation when offered for sale.

If one is looking for a breakeven when reselling a knife, it might be a good idea to to make the initial purchase on the secondary market by buying previously owned (but not "used") knives.
 
JTR357 said:
It's such a terrible investment. There used to be a time 15-20 years ago when you got in a pinch & needed to make a few bucks, you'd get back 3/4 what you put into it. This applies to the big names too, like Busse, CRK, Hinderer & Strider. You'd be lucky to get half of what you paid for any of them these days, untouched, no cut no carry. Nothing holds its value anymore. They're worse than buying a new car & losing half the value driving it off the lot. I don't care about the new steels anymore or new designs. I'm just done. I have enough knives to last 100 lifetimes. I'm just going to keep what I have instead of practically giving them away. I'd rather give them away to my family when I die. Sorry to be a bummer but I'm just done with it all. I had a good run. 2002-2025. Rant over
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You’re buying the wrong ones apparently. My Les George knives have never sold at a loss.
 
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