Prices at Gun/Knife Shows

B

Brazos

Joined
Feb 14, 2005
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What are your experiences with prices at gun/knive shows? Are you able to find good deals or do the prices tend to be on the high side?
 
Good subject.

FIRST of all, there's a BIG between buying knives at a gun show and a knife show!

At GUN SHOWS I've been LIED TO at every knife table I've been to at every gun show I've ever been to. It's always some slimy guy selling knives for above MSRP or selling Chinese crap. They always give me a bunch of B.S. about Rockwell Hardness on some CRKT or Kershaw as soon as I reach the table as if to assume that everyone he meets is an idiot and nobody knows jack about knives. My favorite is that I'm frequently told something is "rare" or "hard to find anymore" when it isn't.

(You just HAD to get me started! :mad: There's more where THAT came from!)

KNIFE shows, on the other hand, I've only had positive experiences at knife shows. The prices seem to be around what you'd find on the forums or online retailers with the occasional steal of a deal. I picked up an Extrema Ratio folder like new for $150 at my last knife show.
 
I once picked up a mint Richmond Ek #5, Micarta handles, Black box, wax paper wrapping, all papers and the very rare leather sheath(worth $100 itself) for, the grand total of a hundred dollars...

I think you get it both ways. You get bad deals and good deals. You just have to look for it.
 
MelancholyMutt said:
I once picked up a mint Richmond Ek #5, Micarta handles, Black box, wax paper wrapping, all papers and the very rare leather sheath(worth $100 itself) for, the grand total of a sawbuck...

I think you get it both ways. You get bad deals and good deals. You just have to look for it.
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You got this for $10? Where can I get one?
 
a sawbuck... Sorry, I checked again and it means ten bucks... I thought it meant a hundred bucks...

I've edited the previous post to reflect it.
 
I've had good luck at knife tables at gun shows but just because I knew what I was looking for already and had done pricing research. You can definitely get ripped off if you don't... but if you know what you are after, you can haggle like crazy!
 
one thing i notice at gun shows is the prices can be completely different. on one table a particular knife might be 50 dollars over the MSRP and another under it might be 20 dollars cheaper than you've seen anywhere on the net. another thing is there may be a sticker and a price, but its not like theres an ecommerce shopping cart for checkout... the prices are negotiable if you're good ;)

as far as them trying to "scam" people i think most of the time they're scammed themselves, they actually believe cold steel makes the best knives in the world, especially for covert deanimation, etc.
 
What fulloflead said. Many ripoff artists and ignorant @$$holes at gun shows concerning knives.

Knife shows-different story. You get to meet makers, and so amny people there know what they are talking about-- you will almost always get a fair deal if not an incredible one.

So have aq good time at both. As long as yoiu know what you are doing- you cant' be ripped off. If you don't know--stick to buying knives at knife shows. You will never meed a bunch of people so willing to explain things to you and atalk about their work. I am sure that the knife business includes some dishonest people, but i have been doing this for awhile, and I have had NO bad experiences.
 
Went to a gun show last Sat. and saw about everything mentioned above - lies, ignorance, wild price ranges - but also a couple of guys who make their own and were good to talk to. Also got a $200 BSA knife for $30.00 and a new BG ax for $25.00.
 
I've had a little of both at both types of shows. As far as gun shows, every other table was selling those knockoff Half EKI commanders/half KFF PsOS and every guy selling the had to demonstrade this "new feature" for me. OOh.. Ahh!! At the same show I saw (and stupindly passed up) a Spydie Shabaria for $30. At knife shows, well I live in NY so it feels like the prices are jacked up just a bit. It's awesome meeting makers and handling their work. but most dealers' prices are easy to pass on. The NECKA show in Stamford, CT is much more fullfilling if you want to get quality bargains. BTW they don't allow gun or knife shows in my hoity toity county :rolleyes: .
 
Some of my very best purchases, both guns and knives, have been at gun shows. The key is to know as much or more about what you are looking at than the guy selling it. Do not let yourself succumb to a sales pitch of any sort. Only buy it if you want it and know personally that it is a good deal. You also must be willing to just enjoy the show for what it is and walk away empty handed if you don't find that deal. Don't ever go to a show with the attitude that you must buy something to make going worthwhile.
 
MikeH said:
Some of my very best purchases, both guns and knives, have been at gun shows. The key is to know as much or more about what you are looking at than the guy selling it. Do not let yourself succumb to a sales pitch of any sort. Only buy it if you want it and know personally that it is a good deal. You also must be willing to just enjoy the show for what it is and walk away empty handed if you don't find that deal. Don't ever go to a show with the attitude that you must buy something to make going worthwhile.
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I guess my problem is that AFTER the guy tries to "educate" about the about the super-duper 60 Rockwell Hardness of his handmade Kershaw and AFTER the guy tells me that the Cold Steel SRK "is getting rare as hen's teeth" and AFTER he tells me that he's only "5% above cost" on his $160 Kershaw Boa and that he needs to "SOMEHOW" pay for his table...
AFTER all that, I simply can't stomach the idea of handing the slimeball ANY amount of my hard-earned money even if I DID manage to talk the POS down to a reasonable price on a knife.

I have simple rules. I can forgive high prices at shows, but LIE to me and I'm moving on. ;)
 
It's a crap shoot.You have to keep your eyes open.The best deals I've come across were several various Blackjack/EK models that were going for 40-70.00 a piece new/old stock effingham/Richmond models.I picked up a custom Erickson bali for 300.00 and saw some old nib benchmade 44/45 bali's for about 100.00 each.some shows suck,and some don't.
 
Marcelo Cantu said:
BTW they don't allow gun or knife shows in my hoity toity county :rolleyes: .
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I remember some of the best shows at the Yonkers raceway. Lots of great dealers would travel the extra time to get near the NYC market. That show was much better than any of the upstate shows because it pulled in the largest crowds with the best money. I knew guys who would save up for months and blow three to five grand there.
 
My business partners and I worked our way up from two tables of a mixed bag (customs and crap) to three tables at the Puyallup gun show every month from 1993 to 1995.

At the end of that time, we were selling nothing but good stuff(Benchmade, Kershaw, Spyderco....up to custom flippers and Chappel knives). The idea was to work off of a 30% profit margin to make it fair for the buyers, and make good knives more accessible. This obviously is before the heyday of the Internet. In that time we bought some really good knives from other makers, and dealers, and sometimes we had fun. It was a lot of work.

Rednecks and ignorant people made it a drain. The last show we ever did I had someone drop a knife that they were looking at on a mint Randall Mod.14 priced at $350, and chunk the micarta, and run off like a scared puppy. The same day, and the straw that broke the camels' back as it were was when this "lady" started tapping the point of a custom Crawford Assassin that I was showing her on top of a glass display case, telling me that "that's how you tell if a knife has good steel". I lost it, my business partner had to physically restrain me from thrashing her.

It is not ALWAYS the merchants at a gun show that make it a sucky experience, sometimes it is the clientele. This last weekend at Del Mar, I had a great time chatting with Barry Dawson, and the rest of the show sucked.

When someone wanted to trade a knife with me at Puyallup, I tried to be knowledgeable, and give them a good deal, cash or trade. Nobody at Del Mar that I talked to had the experience or personality to make a worthy trade with. Sign o' the times my friends.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
I've found that guys selling just knives at gun shows charge way too much, and that guys that have a table full of junk, and some good knives, will charge well below what the market will bear.
 
Kohai999 said:
It is not ALWAYS the merchants at a gun show that make it a sucky experience, sometimes it is the clientele.
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I'll give you that.

Sometimes one of the slimeballs knifesellers at the local gun shows leaves his daughter to run the table. She's about 20 and good looking (and usually showing lots of skin) which is probably why he "lets" her run the table sometimes without him. She's decent. The prices are still too high, but at least she doesn't try to BS you if you don't try to BS her. (She'll even let you just "check out" a few knives even if you're not a serious buyer if you're straight with her.)

Anyway, once I saw that she had about a half-dozen people watching her demonstrate some Microtechs and a few of them actually had their money in their hands. Some dude walks up behind the crowd and takes great pride in "informing" the group that just owning a switchblade "gets you mandatory jail time" and walks off. All her potential customers got spooked off. It was both incorrect and TOTALLY unneccessary and TOTALLY none of his business IMHO. I felt really sorry for her and went up and told her what I thought of the whole deal.
 
I've been to many gun and knife shows and overall they're fun and the prices are equal to the internet on new stock. As with any group of people there are fringe dealers, but some of them aren't lying, they believe their hype because they got it from a distributor or marketing materiels. Sometimes the prices are extreme, more often at gun shows, but they are usually reasonable.

I have heard dealers mis-representing the law on switchblades. The law in my state is you can own them but you cannot carry them. If carried, they count as a concealed weapon and you get the same treatment as if it was a gun. It's a felony conviction. Some places might have similar rules, but with a mandatory jail time requirement. When I hear dealers misrepresenting the law, I have said something and it queered the deal. I don't volunteer, but if someone is spreading wrong info, I don't think that's right. I don't want some young man to get a felony conviction because a knife seller either was ignorant or lied concerning the law.
 
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