I haven't found a special exclusive release I've really cared that much to have week 1, rather put it on a list when everything dies down. Eventually prices normalize to the actual value of the knife somewhere between original selling price and week 1 flipping price. For actual pieces one could conceivably collect and share with the next generation, this doesn't work, but those knives aren't on the mad rush list anyway. For example, can't really sniff a beer scout these days, but when they go up for sale it's still reasonable. For whatever reason mass produced "Exclusives" from Spyderco are funding college educations worldwide during the first month of release.
-
All For Sale threads must have a pic showing the knife being sold with written date listed, your username & Bladeforums or BFC to prevent photo harvesting from elsewhere - scammers hate this one trick! The rules for The Exchange can be found here. Please read and follow them. Stop using Paypal Friends & Family and follow our best practices to prevent getting ripped off or having a bad deal.
-
The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Inflated prices
- Thread starter Chris*33
- Start date
- Status
Limiting sales threads would make members consider listing more than one knife per thread, if they had more than a few to sell.
Too many regulations could also discourage some members from renewing their membership, if they disagreed, with the new rules.
I'm with ya until this. Doesn't this cast way too wide of a net? This would limit a lot of gold members, like myself, that routinely sell off knives to fund new ones for their personal hoard. Even limiting the number of knives sold per year and/or membership would impact a lot of members with no intentions of flipping, but might be a more accurate reflection of intent.
How about making a sticky thread on the production (but not customs or traditionals, cuz nobody cares what happens with these sales
) exchange homepage that serves as a kind of PSA as to the practice of "flipping"?
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2005
- Messages
- 8,340
You already can do that, though, in fact, you're supposed to do that. If you have mutiple knives for sale, they're supposed to go in the same thread by subcategory, i.e. Custom Production, Folding Production, Custom, etc.
I'm with ya until this. Doesn't this cast way too wide of a net? This would limit a lot of gold members, like myself, that routinely sell off knives to fund new ones for their personal hoard. Even limiting the number of knives sold per year and/or membership would impact a lot of members with no intentions of flipping, but might be a more accurate reflection of intent.
How about making a sticky thread on the production (but not customs or traditionals, cuz nobody cares what happens with these sales
That's definitely true. All of these proposals have side effects that will hit people not targeted.
Some guy in the exchange just declined to sell to a first buyer because he “might be a flipper”. Meanwhile the guy is selling the knife for a markup himself.
So what makes someone a flipper? Is the expectation that you’re supposed to eat shipping and sell the knife for no more than what you paid, in order to sleep at night? Or do you cover your shipping in your price, or do you take an extra $2 for yourself on top of your costs? Or $20? Is there a moral difference between profiting 10 cents and profiting $1000 on a knife sale? Why? I’m sure some people think it’s evil to ever sell any knife from your collection for more than what you paid. I think that’s unreasonable. I don’t think it’s fair to argue over dollar amounts that divide the good from the bad.
Sorry for ranting. I just don’t see how someone could be a career flipper. Let’s say Flipper bought 10 Caly Jrs for $77 each. He wants to sell them for $120. That’s $430 profit right? Except wait. $430 is not a lot of money. It’s not enough to pay a months rent for a lot of people. And oh wait, he can’t get 10 Caly Jrs. He could only get 5. And it took him a lot of time and effort to get those 5. So Flipper is making $215. And it’s gonna take him 5 sales at $120 each. Flipper is spending his time, his life, flipping these pocket knives to go through all this effort to make a couple hundred bucks? Do you know how much I had to pay my mechanic to fix the suspension on my car? You’d have to flip knives for 10,000 years to make what these guys make in a month.
So what makes someone a flipper? Is the expectation that you’re supposed to eat shipping and sell the knife for no more than what you paid, in order to sleep at night? Or do you cover your shipping in your price, or do you take an extra $2 for yourself on top of your costs? Or $20? Is there a moral difference between profiting 10 cents and profiting $1000 on a knife sale? Why? I’m sure some people think it’s evil to ever sell any knife from your collection for more than what you paid. I think that’s unreasonable. I don’t think it’s fair to argue over dollar amounts that divide the good from the bad.
Sorry for ranting. I just don’t see how someone could be a career flipper. Let’s say Flipper bought 10 Caly Jrs for $77 each. He wants to sell them for $120. That’s $430 profit right? Except wait. $430 is not a lot of money. It’s not enough to pay a months rent for a lot of people. And oh wait, he can’t get 10 Caly Jrs. He could only get 5. And it took him a lot of time and effort to get those 5. So Flipper is making $215. And it’s gonna take him 5 sales at $120 each. Flipper is spending his time, his life, flipping these pocket knives to go through all this effort to make a couple hundred bucks? Do you know how much I had to pay my mechanic to fix the suspension on my car? You’d have to flip knives for 10,000 years to make what these guys make in a month.
This is so true. The amount of potential profit is so miniscule, that it's almost ludicrous to think about denying those guys the measly salary that they earn.
Even when I was building fences and decks, 30 years ago in California, I was making $400 a day, which was pretty good money back then.
I think that what this thread is really about is that some people think that the law of supply and demand shouldn't apply to knives for some nebulous "good of the community " which looks an awful lot like the "good of their wallets."
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2016
- Messages
- 24
I agree, This whole crybaby session is all because of some Spyderco sprints. Nothing more. People here will pay 400 dollars for a slysz bowie. 800 dollars for a team gemini that was originally 280 something, and thousands of dollars for micro techs and shiros etc...
But a Spyderco thats 35-40 bucks above retail OH GOD!! THE SHAME!
Y'all are adults right?
Maybe tell Spyderco to make more of a certain model so they aren't as rare. You're lucky Spyderco doesn't charge dealers top dollar like other companies *COUGH EVERYONE ELSE COUGH*
A very significant thing about spyderco is that every sprint has an opportunity to be worth something. It drives the market, increases popularity and drives people to buy more.
Just look at Busse, same logic: Rare steel, limited supply, almost always worth more.
(BUT NOT A SINGLE PERSON HERE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT)
If they made more than 500 per "special run" maybe everyone would have one for their EDC instagramming. (Oops I went there.)
If you "Collectors" are so adamant about getting the damn knife that you shame others who pick up a rare one to resell, how about you
BUY IT WHEN IT COMES OUT.
This is almost comical.
Just who are we warning and trying to protect by identifying flippers? Does anyone who buys a Spyderco Sprint knife on the secondary market not already know they were $165/$185 from a dealer. Same with GEC and Northwoods. Some will drop today at 4pm in the low $100s and be on ebay an hour later for $250. The people who buy these already know what they should have sold for but are willing to pay more. They are the ones who drive the market. Retribution comes to them years later when that same knife cannot be sold again for what they paid
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2005
- Messages
- 8,340
Geez, retribution comes to all of us knife collectors...
It's pretty simple. Just set item limits - lots of vendors/etailers/manufacturers do it. One or two per account. Or not. Like I have said, I am not into this part of the knife collecting market, but it makes it a little more likely more people who want them and can't always be online for the drop will have a shot.
In the end, I don't actually care much.
Peter Hartwig
Gold Member
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2008
- Messages
- 5,662
The motivation would be to spread the goods around to your loyal customers, but I think they look at it differently and like the somewhat unpredictable and frenzied event. People like even more what is hard to get. The 1st is controlled and boring(like buying any other knife) the 2nd exciting(winning)-it's an event-no time to ponder and since they are going up in value, no worries about the wrong decision.
If they lost 10-20% immediately, rather than go up, How anxious would people be to buy, even though it is still the same knife.
Last edited:
Yep, I have seen that strategy work for years now for outfits like Busse. I don't think they are really limiting their customers purchases though. Rather they create artificial demand and scarcity in order to drive a strong primary and secondary market. It's very clever really and I don't see any particular reason that they would or should stop. As a manufacturer I would be completely disinterested in limiting purchases. You want to buy them all and have the means to do so? Have at it!
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2010
- Messages
- 9,847
Busse are a bit different, in the current model some blades are limited in number but the majority of new releases are not, they are generally "pre-order" so if they get 5K orders for a model they then know that's ho many they need to produce.
Interesting, I'm not particularly interested in their knives so I don't keep up very well. It sounds like they have reached an enviable place in the market where they have generated enough demand that they can do what essentially amount to "custom" runs. Good for them! Do they require a deposit or something up front? I don't particularly remember them at the Blade Show last year either. Were they there?
I haven't read all the way through this thread, though I suspect it'll be the same as it always is, from most of the same characters.
My own personal take is this: I don't like being preyed upon. Sure, that's Capitalism. I get it. It's also why there are plenty of knives I don't own, because I refuse to pay scumbag flippers for knives that they vacuumed up in order to take advantage of others. I refuse to allow them the opportunity to exploit my love for a hobby. At the end of the day, it's just a hobby. Furthermore, flippers always show their lack of quality when all of them are all "I take Paypal, friends and family or add 7,000,000%" or the clear "I'm a lazy idiot who's bad at math" shown with their "NET to me" nonsense. I mean, the silver lining here is that at least they're helpful enough to you a "Steer Clear of Scum" sign.
So, thanks for that!
My own personal take is this: I don't like being preyed upon. Sure, that's Capitalism. I get it. It's also why there are plenty of knives I don't own, because I refuse to pay scumbag flippers for knives that they vacuumed up in order to take advantage of others. I refuse to allow them the opportunity to exploit my love for a hobby. At the end of the day, it's just a hobby. Furthermore, flippers always show their lack of quality when all of them are all "I take Paypal, friends and family or add 7,000,000%" or the clear "I'm a lazy idiot who's bad at math" shown with their "NET to me" nonsense. I mean, the silver lining here is that at least they're helpful enough to you a "Steer Clear of Scum" sign.
So, thanks for that!
This alone would actually do it. If a flipper wanted to make some money, they'd have to pony up the appropriate level of membership. Another forum I'm a member of does it this exact way, and it seems to work. Not only are you limited in the number of threads, you're limited in the number of items PER thread that you're allowed to post. You look in their Classifieds section and the only ones constantly selling items are folks who are known and clearly designated (with banners) resellers or reps for a company. There's none of this BS "Oh, it just wasn't for me, so here's four of this limited edition, very limited drop for sale." nonsense there. You want to sell a bunch of knives, you're going to pay for the privilege (something that 99% of these flippers are sidestepping). Also, F&F is not tolerated there either. It's great.
Limiting sales threads would not be a very acceptable practice for some members. Sometimes it's only possible to sell one knife, for every four or five sales threads, unless you're giving it away. A system like that, might be more agreeable if it limited only actual sales.
- Status