Knife Markups?

S

SkyStream

Joined
Aug 19, 2020
Messages
111
I'm fairly new to the hobby and I'm really starting to realize that some of the price markups are so high that it's really making me lose interest in the hobby. Obviously dealers have to make money but I'm finding some of the markups are so high that I feel ripped off and it's really making me lose interest. It's as if some of these companies are just trying to appeal to collectors instead of reach average knife users. Anyway, I think I'm done paying more than $200 on a knife.
 
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It’s a subject that has been talked about recently and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. Manufacturing costs rise all the time but I definitely agree that there is a lot of air in the prices at this moment and many knives are more luxury than tools.
 
Well, I own over 60 knives and I've never paid more than $160 for a knife. I think over $125 three or four times. There are plenty of good knives to be had at lesser price points.

As for the last few years, the pandemic, supply chain, staffing, and now inflation has added to the cost of all goods.
 
SkyStream said:
I'm fairly new to the hobby and I'm really starting to realize that some of the price markups are so high that it's really making me lose interest in the hobby. Obviously dealers have to make money but I'm finding some of the markups are so high that I feel ripped off and it's really making me lose interest. It's as if some of these companies are just trying to appeal to collectors instead of reach average knife users. Anyway, I think I'm done paying more than $200 on a knife.
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Could you be more specific? Are you talking about the traditional knives that collectors run up the price on or do you just think stuff is overpriced in general?
 
SkyStream said:
I'm fairly new to the hobby and I'm really starting to realize that some of the price markups are so high that it's really making me lose interest in the hobby. Obviously dealers have to make money but I'm finding some of the markups are so high that I feel ripped off and it's really making me lose interest. It's as if some of these companies are just trying to appeal to collectors instead of reach average knife users. Anyway, I think I'm done paying more than $200 on a knife.
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Just because something is over $200 doesn't mean it's for collectors. There is a lot that goes into pricing for a knife, or for anything for that matter. What knives are you looking at?
 
SkyStream said:
I'm fairly new to the hobby and I'm really starting to realize that some of the price markups are so high that it's really making me lose interest in the hobby. Obviously dealers have to make money but I'm finding some of the markups are so high that I feel ripped off and it's really making me lose interest. It's as if some of these companies are just trying to appeal to collectors instead of reach average knife users. Anyway, I think I'm done paying more than $200 on a knife.
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This is erroneous thinking. You can think the price is too high, that's a matter of opinion. And it can be too high for you to be interested, which is also a matter of opinion, and certainly an opinion that basically everyone here shares, no matter how addicted or well-off they are, once you get to some point. And it can be too high for you to fit your budget, which is a matter of fact. And the price can be so high that your inexperience can't tell the difference between an $800 knife and a $200 knife. From a functional standpoint, there isn't much of one, hence the famous 80/20 rule - you get 80% of the results for 20% of the cost, and the last 20% of results costs you 80% of the price. But for high-end collectors, the difference between a Sebenza and Benchmade is pretty clear from a collecting standpoint, even if from a using standpoint it's more a matter of opinion than function.

But I don't think you have any knowledge of the markup at each level from production through retail. Retail sales is generally a pretty low-margin business.
 
There are plenty of really nice knives out there at affordable prices.

I think what happened is the current trend to legalize auto knives. Those had been sky high in price only because they were so difficult to buy - legally.
Now that the legal prop has been kicked out, they need to have some other reason to keep the prices up there - so - they just raise the price of everything!
 
You're the only one that can determine your price ceiling, but with more companies going to MAP policies and such I don't think the dealer markup is as big as you seem to think.

Bluntly, the vast majority of the knives purchased and discussed on this forum are purely luxury items and it's hard for me to be too upset about them being priced that way.
 
I mostly agree with the dominant sentiment here, which seems to be, yes, prices are up, yes, that's a bummer, but choosing not to go for that 94th knife is probably not a hardship worth crying about.

What has been bugging me lately, as someone who does buy expensive knives sometimes, is a practice by certain vendors that seems designed to sucker people. There was a specific knife model I was looking at recently, and ultimately didn't end up buying. It was priced at ~$550 in several shops, and $750 at one. This is a model the maker only releases a few of, of course, so I guess a ~25% price gouge seems like something someone feeling FOMO will pounce on.

I've only written off one vendor like this entirely. But when I catch another one doing it, they move to the bottom of my link list so I check them last.
 
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