As one of the more veteran buyer/sellers of Emersons than some of my compatriot Suspects, I am surprised at the reluctance to post prices paid. Only through such disclosure can the prices be kept to the levels you'd like to see (at least when buying). Tamishigiri was the first to point this out, but his entreaty fell on deaf ears.
We ARE the market! The price paid for an Emerson is not some arbitrary value assigned by a faceless mechanism; it is simply whatever the populace of this forum dictates it to be.
Several knives came up for sale earlier this year, and they were priced outside of the range we "assigned" for those pieces. They didn't sell, either. I've several times seen Emersons at shows (NYC custom in particular) sitting untouched on dealers tables because their pricing is unrelated to the numbers we bandy about here, and the rest of the crowd doesn't care. When Joel recently asked about Viper 4 pricing, he knew that he'd be a fool to pay more than what we collectively thought it was worth. I think he should have made the answers public, mine included (for the record, I figured around $1,200 - but that's just my threshold), as well as the price he did pay. To keep the overanxious from making a mistake...
We're the market - because there ain't too many people buying them outside of us. Sniper's yeoman work of listing the known pieces was a great start, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for it. After all, no one is telling you that there are only 2 ES1-Ms in civvie hands anymore, or that your Vindicator is too common to merit the price you want. Why hestitate to publish the prices too? The only person it harms is the guy who's trying to screw you, either coming or going. Just my opinion anyway. Oh, and the last CQC6 I sold (this past Spring) was to a fellow forumite and he got the FOL discount at under $1000.
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