Production Knife Speculators - Step inside please

[spoonrobot]

So I've been sucked back into the knife hobby after a 5 year hiatus or so. What I'm noticing is that a lot of the regular models from 2007-2011 or so that are now discontinued have shown significant increases in price on the secondary market.

I've been wondering if this is due to delayed demand - after the recession a lot of hobbies dried up as people lost jobs and discretionary income shrank. Now that we're closer to full employment and hobbyists are returning the prices are naturally rising with demand.

Or if it's just part of the cyclical nature of collector items? Certain knives are hot and then cool down over time just by virtue of trend and primacy drive consumption.

The second part of this slightly disjointed train of thought is, can anyone recall a knife that sold ok, was discontinued for a reasonable price, had a huge value increase on the secondary market and then decreased in price again?

I can recall several different models that went through the first three steps but can't think of a single one that went all the way back to a price decrease? I'd define the categories this way (the multipliers are really just a best guess, this won't hold for all examples):

• Street price - Knife in production, price 0.5-0.75x MSRP
• Closeout price - Knife production discontinued, price 0.5-0.75x street price street price
• Collector price - Knife is rare on secondary market with high demand, price 1.5-3x street price
• Diminished price - Knife is rare on secondary market but low demand, price is at street price or lower.

An obvious example that wouldn't qualify would be something like the Spyderco USN Endura. Limited run, very collectable.

Street price: $85-$95 (MSRP $119.99)
Closeout price: $70
Collector price: $200-$300
Diminished price: @$150-$200

So the demand for this knife never really dropped to a level around the original street price. From what I can tell it's still very sought after with a price that reflects this.

You'll notice I haven't accounted for inflation yet. For the short term (<10 years) I don't think this matters very much. I'm working on a index to account for this, something similar to "The Big Mac Index" but with knives/time. Say if a Delica costs X in 2015 and it used to cost X in 2010 we can back into what the knife market inflation would be.

 

[Murindo]

One variable that should be considered is the impact of Internet collecting forums on the market. That may account for the increased demand in the last five years.

Often a new collector wants to 'back collect" models he doesn't have because he just started collecting. Sometimes forum interests and posts of new collections generate added collectors of the same knife further increasing demand.

Knife collecting even for investment should be fun not so much math. Collectors are a fickle lot and often knife prices past and current have no bearing on future value. Custom knives are even more difficult to predict.

Maybe without giving away any investments you plan to make you could be more specific in your examples to get comments from actual collectors of those knives.

 

[RevDevil]

The price of just about every knife a customer can buy has gone up in the last 3 years. Emerson, Spyderco, Benchmade, Zero Tolerance, TOPS, ESEE, Becker, etc. I agree with Murindo, trying to figure out what a selling price for an item is via much mathematical calculation takes the fun right out of it, and goes against the whole idea behind speculation. Many people do in fact buy knives, only to turn around and sell them on the Exchange or Ebay for double or whatever they can get for them. If I am wrong then there are really a lot of senseless consumers there that suffer from an impulse control disorder, because they mostly have the same terminology in their ads.

 

[bdmicarta]

There are a lot of ups and downs in the knife market. Some discontinued knives are in high demand and sell for inflated prices, other discontinued knives sell for a fraction of their new price. It is hard to predict ahead of time. The only thing you can predict is that some popular limited edition knives by some of the manufacturers are in demand from the beginning and do sell for more than suggested prices. These are somewhat easy to predict but still not foolproof.

There are other people that ask about buying knives as investments. On the average I don't think this works, unless you are good at selecting which knives to buy or you are really lucky. I've been buying and selling knives for a long time and I manage to just break even. But then a hobby that you can break even with is way better than most.

If you want to invest money for profit then you should invest in something else.