Mint New in Box

[gonebad395]

.... Never mind ......

 

[Sirryacus]

One general piece of advice is if you plan to sell a knife later and assume you purchased it NIB (your mini grip is NIB?), you should try not to sharpen it. Other than that, it is really up to you: how sharp you want your knives to be and what you will use your knives for. You have some quality sharpening gear there (DMT stones) and if you are good at using them, I'm sure you can put up beautiful and scary sharp edges to your knives. I'd do that with that user Sage 3.

Are you saying in your opinion someone should never under any circumstances sell a knife that has been resharpened?

 

[sharp_edge]

Are you saying in your opinion someone should never under any circumstances sell a knife that has been resharpened?

No. What I was saying is a sharpened knife no longer viewed as many has the same value as not sharpened at all if everything else is the same. Sorry that it is being taken in a different way. It is your knife and you can do whatever you want with it. Many sharpened knives have been sold/resold and there is nothing wrong with that. I sharpen most of my knives.

 

[trevitrace]

What?

 

[buckfynn]

I got a kick out of this sale from a popular online auction site. The seller lists the condition of the knife as "item may have some signs of cosmetic wear" but then goes on to include the following caveat in another section.

for sale a used but in good shape... ...bushcraft knife it does show some signs of use the logo is visible but a little faded the tip had a small chip that i worked out of it but may still be visible if you look close enough the spine of the knife was used a few times for a flint and steel but still looks good the sheath is in overall good shape it does show some signs of use it comes with a ferro rod loop any questions feel free to ask thanks for looking

[sarcasm on] Gee I can't imagine why no one has bid on this fine knife with a bit of "cosmetic wear." [/sarcasm off] At least I give the seller credit in the second description that he has beat the crap out of this knife.

 

[MadStork]

SNIP>LNIB: Knife has been removed from box to verify condition as acceptable and returned to box. Seller is first owner and has never actually handled the knife.<<<
ME: If you remove it from the box to verify condition you have then "ACTUALLY" handled the knife. Your list is OK, but this contradicts itself.

 

[LAtraffic]

I follow you SHARP EDGE. I believe all he was saying is do what I want with my knives, there is no hard rule on when to sharpen them. He would be most likely to use and sharpen the Sage 3 first being as it is already a light user condition knife and the griptilian is a NIB knife at this point. Only because of the spirit of the thread is discussing these terms and what they SHOULD mean and what the DO seemingly mean to some.

 

[benzy2]

The beauty of this hobby for me is that I'm not looking for a safe queen. I'm not looking for a knife I literally never take out of the package. If that's your enjoyment, more power to you, but it seems like it misses the point of what these tools and pieces of art are meant to do. If the goal is purely to resell later, I'm not against that either but I don't honestly understand a lot of the frustration in this thread. People are hung up on if the knife has been out of the box. I hope it has. If I'm buying an investment, I'd like to know its in proper condition. What if it left the factory with a huge defect? And then say the first owner honestly never opened the box and sold you a defective item listed as NIB? I think most would be frustrated that something probably out of production is now no longer fixable and will never be the "Mint" item they paid for.

If it's not from the factory, I assume it's been out of the box. Some retailers will open them and many owners will open them. I'm not buying an untouched piece. Even the factory will touch the knife so there seems no point to argue there. If the box was damaged opening, then there could be an issue. If a cosmetic defect was added by a store/owner, again that's a problem. But removing for pictures or display with no visible wear doesn't seem like it's changing the definition of the quality of the knife. Maybe a percentage grade would make things easier, or as some forums do place a letter grade to a knife. The ambiguity of some terms is frustrating but I'd always assume the worst and pay for that condition unless you can get a seller to verify otherwise.

If we are just frustrated people can be shady, well that's nothing new. Hopefully we all can get the knives we enjoy, talk about the aspects of this hobby we enjoy, and minimize time with those that frustrate us.

 

[bdmicarta]

Are you saying in your opinion someone should never under any circumstances sell a knife that has been resharpened?

Sharpening a new knife reduces its potential resale value, even if you put a much better edge on it than it came with from the factory.

IMO NIB means new, unused, unmodified. You can't sharpen it, strop it or change the clip. As a practical matter you can carry a knife a small amount, cut a couple of pieces of paper, or fondle it a little bit and nobody can possibly tell the difference so that wouldn't affect the NIB classification.

If you carry the knife more than a tiny bit, or cut with it, you could call it LNIB. If you swap the clip around, it isn't even LNIB anymore. "Mint" could be another word for LNIB.

 

[Hackenslash]

SNIP>LNIB: Knife has been removed from box to verify condition as acceptable and returned to box. Seller is first owner and has never actually handled the knife.<<<
ME: If you remove it from the box to verify condition you have then "ACTUALLY" handled the knife. Your list is OK, but this contradicts itself.

No contradiction. It's possible to verify the presence of the knife without placing fingerprints upon it and fondling it's vital mechanisms. i only contradict myself when I intend to

 

[Sirryacus]

Sharpening a new knife reduces its potential resale value, even if you put a much better edge on it than it came with from the factory.

IMO NIB means new, unused, unmodified. You can't sharpen it, strop it or change the clip. As a practical matter you can carry a knife a small amount, cut a couple of pieces of paper, or fondle it a little bit and nobody can possibly tell the difference so that wouldn't affect the NIB classification.

If you carry the knife more than a tiny bit, or cut with it, you could call it LNIB. If you swap the clip around, it isn't even LNIB anymore. "Mint" could be another word for LNIB.

I know sharpening it will obviously affect the value but I don't feel that is any reason not to sell an item as long as it's disclosed, I suppose you could say I was thinking more from a standpoint of older knives that you may find second hand which you really have no control over whether they were sharpened or not.

 

[mqqn]

Hey Ted!

It's going to always be tough with the old knives; I hope some of you guys picked up on Mr. Levine's techniques for "reading the knife".

The internet re-kindled my knife passion, and finding this forum allowed me to find many knives that I would never have run into just pattering around my town.

Bucks and Case Knives are great, but it's also cool to know about GEC and Canal Street, not to mention Busse and Emerson and Zero Tolerance etc.

The combined knowledge here is vast, as long as we and the tireless moderators can continue to keep the discussions civil.

As far as new, I had to think about that. New only happens once. The person that buys the knife from the manufacturer or an authorized retailer is the only person that receives a NEW knife, without regard to any QC issues or dealer "applied" mishandling blemishes.

After that, you can only, in my opinion, have a knife that is in excellent condition with all original packaging. It goes downhill from there.

I agree that it would be nice to have compiled a sellers guide to condition, but it does come down to what the individual that is selling the knife considers the condition to be; and they are usually wanting to get the best price so that can cause the knife to look much nicer to them than a potential buyer.

Pictures Pictures Pictures, and good quality pictures as Mr. Levine taught us, will tell more about the knife than any flowery marketing terminology.

best

mqqn

 

[Rey HRH]

Cool topic, OP! Ignore the comments that are smarmy or down-playing.

I'd like to see standards adopted for describing knife conditions. I've never sold here, but I've bought a lot of knives on the Exchange and standards for condition would be nice. I see it something like this:

NIB: Knife has never been removed from box. Seller is first owner and has never handled the knife. Seals, if present, are intact and unbroken. A second (or third, etc) owner can't sell a NIB knife.
LNIB: Knife has been removed from box to verify condition as acceptable and returned to box. Seller is first owner and has never actually handled the knife. A second owner can't sell a LNIB knife.

That might be a little hard core, but I think those are all important points to include in the description of a knife offered for sale in the community. I'm not even touching on custom knives here, I've never owned one (yet )

I agree that's hard core, too hard core for my taste. The only one I would expect to meet your NIB definition is a dealer. If it's a dealer, they would simply describe it as new. I will not believe that a non-commercial person would buy a knife and not even take it out. That's too far fetch for me to believe. Who does that? And why can't a second and third or successive owners cannot in turn sell the item as NIB if they kept the product pristine as the first owner?

I understand it's your opinion and you don't have to defend them. I'm simply reacting to your post as part of the discussion.

 

[Lycosa]

mqqn- Thank you for posting.^
rolf