The Blade Show-A LOT of Overpriced Customs

Bladeandbarrel

Bladeandbarrel

Joined
Oct 5, 1998
Messages
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THIS MOSTLY PERTAINS TO FORGED BLADES AS THAT IS WHAT I PRIMARILY COLLECT

In my opinion and that of many, many other attendees and makers, custom knife prices were waaaay up this year withe QPR in many case way down.

QPR is a wine term, developed by wine snobs to determine the value of a bottle of fine wine. An educated palate can generally rate a bottle of wines based on the QUALITY-TO-PRICE RATIO. (QPR, get it?)

In any case, let me tell you about the good values.

(Keep in mind I collect mostly forged, ABS style knives.)

Some High QPR makers

-Matt Roberts
nice fit and finish with good looking patterns and temper lines.
I bought one.
Sold out at 12:01 when the show opened.

-Lin Rhea
Really stepped up to the plate with some super, duper inexpensive hunters and a few terrific choppers.

-Adam Desrosiers
What can I say. Incredible value. A future star of the ABS. Sold out by Friday afternoon.

-Burt Foster's Blue Collar Knives
If you want a using knife from a MS, just go ahead and buy one, OK?
Great sheathwork too.

-Jason Knight's "Adventure Grade" knives for $550. Brought a dozen pieces of varying degree of embellishment and sold out by Friday evening. Nuff said.

-Ray Kirk's forged 52-100 integral hunters for $225 (WITH SHEATH) Nice work from a nice man.

-Jimmy Chin--all they naysayers were pretty much wrong here. Great fit and finish that looked even better in person. I ordered a takedown fighter.

-Jerry Lairson-his $450 chopper is a great value and a solid performer according to those "in the know".

-Craig Camerer-he brought a big 13" whopper that calls me! His work has really improved in a short time.

-Jim Crowell and his big honking stag bowie. Lots of people lusted after this one. It was a delivery at the show. Few knives are as clean as Jimmy's.

-Horrigan's Hawks-Horrigan had some nice, battle-ready hawks that were quite well done.

The negatives-

-"Master" bladesmiths who cannot sand or grind straight. What gives? I mean, the Blade Show should be for your best knives. The lights in that room are really bright. you can walk by a table and see all the waves and ppor satin finishes from 10 feet away. I wonder if makers realize that? IF your shop isn't well lit, buy some more lights!

-Few decent handmade kitchen knives from what I could see, although I never found Dan Koster? Murrays prices have reached stupid level, IMO.

-No forgers building a decent tactical folder. Oh well. I mean beefy framelock style, not wimpy linerlock style.

-Can you say stupid prices AGAIN? An MS who will remain nameless had a $1400 kitchen knife on his table that was a nice pattern, but should have been $200. Must have been a pricey ball bearing. Who are you trying to fool?

-Something must have happened to the Brazilian currency because the Brazilian makers were sadly all waaay overpriced. Sorry guys, I love you and the knives looked terrific, BUT---no way I am ponying up for some of the prices. The Brazilian makers have gone up 30% over last year, easily. Usually they sell out on Friday----not this year.....take the hint!


-More Makers trying to hit that homer bringing fewer, more embellished/ornate knives. One second-string MS had a gorgeous, lightly engraved Carbon steel bowie for $2100? Really? The maker may die owning that one! Another maker had some $400 kitchen knves that weren't as nice as the aforementioned $150 kitchen knives..

-People still use giraffe bone to my chagrin. It cost at least one sale on my end.

The room was full of $500 hunters and $1500 gentlemans bowies. How passe.
 
Mr Lombardo,thank you for the report.I enjoyed reading about the "QPR".Nice to know about some of the makers and their prices.
Do let us know who won some of the awards.
Glad to hear that Jimmy Chen's knives were good in the fit and finish department.The QPR must be good for his knives.Since you mention that you ordered one of his knives,where all his knives sold out.
 
Yes, Mr. Chins were all sold by the time I got to them. Oddly enough, several were bought by other makers. That is always a good sign.
 
Good to know that there is at least one level head amongst the attendees.:D

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
It is a shame to see that there were makers that would put anything less than their best on a table a Blade. That certainly won't do those makers any good.

I'm not surprised by the names you gave of those that you noticed selling out early. All provide excellent knives at reasonable prices.

I hope we are not seeing a trend in overpriced knives. Makers deserve to make good returns on their knives, but they have to be realistic as well. Nothing will kill their businesses like getting a reputation for be overpriced, other than getting a reputation for shoddy workmanship or dishonesty.

Anthony, are you there for the whole show? A further analysis from you would be of great interest to me.
 
I missed pointing out that I am sorry to see that the Brazilain bladesmiths do not offer the same value that they used to. At one point I thought their knives were some of the best deals around. It is a shame, but a fact of life that when something becomes more popular and better known, the price goes up. Also, I am sure their knives are getting better, but if there are other makers that make just as good a knife charging less, that will eventually lead to a reduction in sales.
 
Anthony Lombardo said:
In my opinion and that of many, many other attendees and makers, custom knife prices were waaaay up this year withe QPR in many case way down.

QUALITY-TO-PRICE RATIO. (QPR, get it?)

-Can you say stupid prices AGAIN? An MS who will remain nameless had a $1400 kitchen knife on his table that was a nice pattern, but should have been $200. Must have been a pricey ball bearing. Who are you trying to fool?

-More Makers trying to hit that homer bringing fewer, more embellished/ornate knives. One second-string MS had a gorgeous, lightly engraved Carbon steel bowie for $2100? Really? The maker may die owning that one! Another maker had some $400 kitchen knves that weren't as nice as the aforementioned $150 kitchen knives..
Click to expand...
This worries me. Didn't this kinda thing happen before in the 70's or 80's?

As I understand it (BTW feel free to correct me if my history is off) mass market knives were, well, for the mass market. Cranked out fast and cheap. If your wanted a GOOD knife you had one made. Then in the mid 80's good production knives started coming out of the factories. Why go custom? So custom makers made fancier and more robust knives. This is why, eventually, the ABS was formed. So custom makers can learn (and be recognized for) how to make knives better than any factory could could make.
Keith Montgomery said:
I hope we are not seeing a trend in overpriced knives. Makers deserve to make good returns on their knives, but they have to be realistic as well. Nothing will kill their businesses like getting a reputation for be overpriced, other than getting a reputation for shoddy workmanship or dishonesty.
Click to expand...
This isn't just bad for the few custom makers doing this, it is bad for customs in general. So what if some guy can pass his MS test if he sells me a blade that was made with minimal processing but THEN charges me the premium price! If enough people do this then then people will be wary of buying custom knives.

I have no problem with people buying $400 production knives. But I can't see myself doing that. Why should I when I can have a journeyman smith make the same knife only it can pass the ABS test. Why buy a chunk of steel that is just ground out (and little else) when I can have a chunk of steel that is ground out and differentually heat treated for in many cases not much more money and in some cases less.

If custom makers start pricing for the privledge or buying custom without a performance (or design) jump, then... Well, people will just buy production.
At least then they buyer knows what he is getting. The custom market will be fill of art knives.

I dodn't want to see that.
 
Thanks for the franck assessment Anthony. I'm not at the show, but anyone who's been looking at prices on line will recognize that what you say is true.

I have mixed feelings regarding the value. On one hand, I don't want to pay too much for my knives, on the other hand I want to see the work of bladesmiths and knifemakers recognized at a higher level than I can support. It's a conundrum. For the last year or two, I have realized that it's nearly impossible to find something reasonably big (i.e., bigger than a hunter) for less than $1,000. Anthony mentionned some names who are exceptions, and I could maybe add a couple names to that, but overall I agree with his assessment.

Regarding the Brazilians, it seems obvious that if they cannot charge more in the US than they can in Brazil, they have no reason to come here. Also, they should charge prices commensurate with that of work of similar quality by Americans. Obviously, that means that their prices are going to go up when compared to past years. Of course, they need to find the sweet spot where the US is a highly profitable business for them and where they still provide a good value for US customers. I suspect that the slide of the US currency has made that a tad more difficult.
 
Anthony, we can always count on you to cut through the window dressing and give us the goods. Thanks for that.

As for the Brazilians and pricing - let me say first off that a appreciate that these decisions are not easy, but they sure are important. I can understand a maker looking at the quality of his work and wanting to price it alongside the work of other makers of similar quality, but the pricing question cannot be answered quite so simply. More than a frank understanding of the quality of his work, a maker needs to understand his position in the market (and have a plan for where he wants that position to be in both the near and long term) in order to price his knives well. Sudden and significant price jumps are rarely an effective move.

I am not familiar with the term QPR as it relates to wine, but am well familiar with the concept as it applies to knives. It drives most of my purchase decisions. And that's not because I look at knives as in investment, per se, but because I only have a limited amount of funds to spend on this hobby and want the most bang for my buck.

Roger
 
Anthony,thanks for the honest insight to the QPR.For me this has really impacted my collecting and not just with ABS knives.Keep the updates coming.
 
Something must have happened to the Brazilian currency because the Brazilian makers were sadly all waaay overpriced. Sorry guys, I love you and the knives looked terrific, BUT---no way I am ponying up for some of the prices. The Brazilian makers have gone up 30% over last year, easily. Usually they sell out on Friday----not this year.....take the hint!
Click to expand...

That is exactly what happened. Currency problems, mostly caused by the interest rates in the USA financial market, oil related influence and some local issues regarding local interst rates and such stuff. The thing is that the currency exchange jumped from 2.06 to 1 to 2.39 to 1 in three days. And that was three weeks from the show, and there was no time to make more knives to conterbalance this effect. So in order to make the trip the prices had to go up a little more than they should.

Also, based on several discussions specialy with forum mates where I was taking part, they decided to use more expensive materials and that calls for a slight ajustment in final prices. Again, consider the currency exchange issue here. They are stocking ivory and other nice stuff as we type.

One issue is that, due to the opportunity of having money on pocket and the vast offer of handle materials that Blade show provides, they will stock as much material they can, and this decision affects the productions of the hole next year.

All this is not to justify the new prices, is just to help you all understand the issues involved in taking such a dangerous path.
 
Shawn Ellis JS also had some nice work that was more classic (ie:Fisk, Crowell, Dean inspired) but at reasonable prices. His damascus was reasonably priced. Not the most creative work, but solid "ABS" style knives.
He could be one to watch.

another Shawn, McIntyre from australia had some nice pieces (The purple guard, Peter :))also but his prices have also creeped up a bit possibly due to curency exchange. His hunters were his best values. Really clean work with nice handle selection.

I also liked some of Brion Tomberlins pieces. More solid values.
 
Regarding my Brazilian friends. They did show nice handle materials and better fit/finish---but---they are quickly losing the competitive edge when it comes to value. Sfreddo had an amazing carbon steel bowie with nickel silver sheath that was really beautiful and well done. It was $2000.
I felt the knife was probably worth $1000-1100 without the sheath.

After conversing with well-known internet purveyor, he stated that ABS style knives were extremely slow as most of the makers were pricing themselves out of the market and the secondary market is growing with lots of collections being dumped at bottom basement prices. He also felt that some of the better bladesmiths that are trying to transition from a part-time to full time livliehood are eroding their customer confidence with big price increases. Needless to say, he is buying fewer and fewer abs blades. This is not good for the secondary market as collector value is sometimes determined by what a purveyor can sell a knife for.

Look for solid values, that offer decent handle materials and solid fit/finish.

Another collector thought that many makers were trying to push the envelope for the show and see what the market would bear. My advice to those makers is to put their knives on ebay if they are really curious what the market will bear right now!
 
Anthony,
Thanks for the assessment/review.Excellent.IMO.:cool:
Concerning the Brazilians.I've seen some of there specimens.Own one.Coop has a Sfreddo integral that's to die for.:eek:
Everybody wants to make money,time will tell.
Did you happen to see any John Fitch's?And what did you think?

Doug:)
 
John had some very nice pieces and his already distinctive styling continues to improve, in my opinion. His work is uniformly clean and classic for the most part and possess great edge geometry. Most of his knives I saw were being delivered to customers. He had one particularly nice damascus piece that had some of the finest wave pattern damascus I have seen. His prices, like the rest, have gotten fairly high. Some of my favorite personal knives are Fitch knives from his pre-MS era when John was making a solid name for himself and delivering tremendous value.
 
Anthony - did you see Bailey's offering? I had a preview of an integral that looked awesome...
 
I did not see that knife so I assume it sold prior to the show. I loved the picture I saw. His sword displayed was pretty spectacular and it looks like he is making good progress with the sawby-locks.
 
People still use giraffe bone to my chagrin. It cost at least one sale on my end.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on the giraffe bone thing some more?

Thanks for the review.
 
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