The Myth of the Overpriced Knife

I'll repeat, there's objectively a way to establish if a product is overpriced or not, and that's if the manufacturer is maximizing their profits. Sell something at too low of a price and a large quantity will sell, but the total profits will be lower than selling fewer of that item at a higher price. Price it too high and you may still sell some, but the profits will be lower than selling more units at a lower price. As such, pricing below the profit maximization point is undervaluing a product (great for the consumer, but not for the seller!) and pricing it too high is overvaluing the product (bad for both the consumer and the seller.)
 
yes what you said there clearly makes sense. What do you think RHK is doing now and why?
 
Charlie Mike said:
To those who say that... I say DO IT :D

I probably have a cumulative $15k tied up in everything needed to make knives that have sold up to $1000.
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Don't need to make a $400 knife (even if I had the skills required) Fortunately, there are a ton of great knives available for $100. And yes, I have a Busse...that doesn't cut any better than my Cold Steel, SAK or Beckers. :D
 
I just spent $1100 on this... (an amazing price for a Walter Brend #2)

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The problem at the core of the argument is how overpriced is defined.

Is it not overpriced only because one person bought it at that price? Maybe not overpriced for him in his own personal life. Duh. But is that what we really mean by overpriced when we discuss it in a public forum among knife nuts?

If we ask here if something is overpriced we want to know many point of views from heck yeah to definitely not. Some with a broader overview might even be able to state things like "for most knife enthusiasts that would be overpriced because it's not Rostafrei and doesn't even have chimping" ;-)

So yes there's no overpriced when it comes to a particular buyer but that one person is not that interesting on its own when such questions are asked. What's not overpriced for A can be for B and C and D. Also if not even A would buy it at that price it can be overpriced for everybody (gasp) except for the seller of course. It's still his choice to hold up the 1 Billion $ price tag for a turd handled knife.
 
sabre cat said:
The myth of the overpriced knife?

Don't kid yourself. It is not a myth. There are many knives that are overpriced.

Just compare the Ka-Bar Dozier folding knife at about twenty bucks and it's cousin the Cutco 1891 at close to one hundred clams.

Both are made by the same company. Same basic blade and both have plastic handles. You can't tell me one is worth more than the other.

And, don't try to tell me that one is worth more if someone is willing to pay the cash, either. That's a crock. The Cutco is just plain overpriced.
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I think this goes to the heart of the matter. In order to talk about a knife being "overpriced," you have to be willing to make a value judgment about the actual quality of knife in question and compare that with the quality of other knives and their asking prices. And while it may not be possible to speak perfectly objectively about it, there can still be "intersubjective validity" to judgments about quality.

As an example, here's a chef's knife by the infamous Chelsea Miller, which has an asking price of $800:

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Assuming (just for the sake of argument) we can agree that the knife is extremely poorly made and poorly designed, and the maker has no idea what she is doing, and that there are beautifully made custom chef's knives by masters of their craft available for less, is it not fair to say that the above knife is overpriced? How about when compared with this gyuto by Shosui Takeda, a world-renowned third-generation master blacksmith, which sold for $780?

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Another thought (not necessarily connected with the ones above): What if I sold a knife that I falsely claimed had M390 steel (and priced it accordingly) when it was really 420J2 steel? Would that knife be overpriced?

These are just my thoughts on the matter. It's a hard question to answer.
 
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Otto Carpenter said:
That, my friend, would be called "fraud," so...
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But would it be overpriced? There are plenty of people here claiming that if someone buys it, it's ipso facto not overpriced. That view fails to take into account any notion of quality, or of whether is uninformed, or whether the buyer has been deceived.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I'll repeat, there's objectively a way to establish if a product is overpriced or not, and that's if the manufacturer is maximizing their profits. Sell something at too low of a price and a large quantity will sell, but the total profits will be lower than selling fewer of that item at a higher price. Price it too high and you may still sell some, but the profits will be lower than selling more units at a lower price. As such, pricing below the profit maximization point is undervaluing a product (great for the consumer, but not for the seller!) and pricing it too high is overvaluing the product (bad for both the consumer and the seller.)
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A fine piece of inductive reasoning, my friend.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I'll repeat, there's objectively a way to establish if a product is overpriced or not, and that's if the manufacturer is maximizing their profits. Sell something at too low of a price and a large quantity will sell, but the total profits will be lower than selling fewer of that item at a higher price. Price it too high and you may still sell some, but the profits will be lower than selling more units at a lower price. As such, pricing below the profit maximization point is undervaluing a product (great for the consumer, but not for the seller!) and pricing it too high is overvaluing the product (bad for both the consumer and the seller.)
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That's interesting, who can determine this? I don't know if the manufacturer can determine this until after the fact sales figures. Can the custom knife maker determine this? I doubt it at least on a market basis other than something sells. Think I'll up the price $40 and see what happens? It sells.... think I'll do another $20 and see how it goes....

A manufacturer will probably estimate their costs and add a mark up. They will compare that to other models they might sell. Then they roll the dice with the consumer and see how it goes.
 
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Up until recently I wouldn't of thought knives could be overpriced until I started to notice the overbuilt, thick bladed, >$1000 tacticals currently in vogue. They don't look like they'd carry well, open well, handle well or even cut well- personally everything that defines a knife. But they seem to sell.

There's a listing for some Borka Blades Stitch folders that looked like they Seller mistakenly added a $0 to the price making them 10 times what one might expect- but no it's real. For the life of me I don't see the value or any reason how they could command such a price. Not even for 1/10 the asking price.
 
22-rimfire said:
That's interesting, who can determine this? I don't know if the manufacturer can determine this until after the fact sales figures. Can the custom knife maker determine this? I doubt it at least on a market basis other than something sells. Think I'll up the price $40 and see what happens? It sells.... think I'll do another $20 and see how it goes....
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You could sell the same object in different places at different price points and thus get some numbers which allow you to calculate the optimum price. Of course that was easier before the Internet days.

Also an optimal price for one particular product might still water down a brand as a whole.
If Busse or CRK suddenly sell an Opinel like knife at its most profitable price point people might come to think of all their other knives as cheap stuff too and then it would be harder to justify the higher prices for those. If however that Opinel like knife were sold at a bigger premium it might not be the optimum price for that one product but it'll be less disruptive for the perceived value of the other models.
 
braillediver said:
Up until recently I wouldn't of thought knives could be overpriced until I started to notice the overbuilt, thick bladed, >$1000 tacticals currently in vogue. They don't look like they'd carry well, open well, handle well or even cut well- personally everything that defines a knife. But they seem to sell.

There's a listing for some Borka Blades Stitch folders that looked like they Seller mistakenly added a $0 to the price making them 10 times what one might expect- but no it's real. For the life of me I don't see the value or any reason how they could command such a price. Not even for 1/10 the asking price.
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Yep!!
 
marcinek said:
Yes, but they still willingly paid the price. Taking the time and effort to find a better deal was not worth it.

If the knife wasnt at a price point they were willing to pay, they wouldnt have paid it.

Anything that sells is not overpriced.

That may be"semantics," but that seems like the whole point.
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Just because you bought something does not mean you didn't pay too much, i.e. the item was overpriced. Pricing is not an individual decision. It is determined by the seller, and we all know that some sellers charge more than others. Car buying is a situation where prices are all over the map and I think if you checked them you would say some people bought a car that was overpriced when compared to the average price of that particular model.
 
Otto Carpenter said:
"You paid how muchThey are, in fact, priced just right.
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There is some wisdom there, to the extent that the "right" price is the one that a buyer will pay. But, when Spyderco and Benchmade go to MAPP pricing (I know "MAPP pricing" is redundant, but I'll say it anyway), they jack up their prices without cranking up the knife's intrinsic value. In that respect, the knives are "overpriced".

If I find a penny, and rub it in my stinky armpit so that all of the ladies will want to pay $300 for it on eBay, here in the world of objective reality its still actually "worth" only a penny.

So it depends on how we define value. If value is a measure of materials, labor, shipping and profit, then a knife is objectively "worth" X and any price over X is "too much". But if we define value as what someone is willing to pay, then the sky is the limit and nothing can ever be said to cost "too much" if someone will buy it. The problem is that if enough knuckleheads pay "too much", then the price is sky high. Look at Spyderco's limited edition Para 2's, as an example. Those knives and not objectively "worth" the cost (by the first definition), but we buy them anyway.
 
[video=youtube;pmTQQqiihR4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmTQQqiihR4[/video]
 
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