Thoughts on authorized dealers raising GEC prices above the minimum sale price.

It's merely something called Capitalism vs the other system. God Bless America !
A command economy is a system where the government, rather than the free market, determines what goods should be produced, how much should be produced, and the price at which the goods are offered for sale. It also determines investments and incomes. The command economy is a key feature of any communist society.
 
skyhorse said:
It's merely something called Capitalism vs the other system. God Bless America !
A command economy is a system where the government, rather than the free market, determines what goods should be produced, how much should be produced, and the price at which the goods are offered for sale. It also determines investments and incomes. The command economy is a key feature of any communist society.
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Simplistic analysis. There are no purely capitalist or even purely communist systems.

FWIW, I'm not here to complain at all. I am just amazed and a bit amused by this whole phenomenon and trying to understand where it will go.
 
People can charge what they want and people can decide if they want to pay it or not. I don’t like the flippers and giant mark up, but I guess I understand it.

What I don’t understand and what I think is bad form is when a dealer starts flipping new releases on eBay at 3-5x the list price. Especially if they do it under another name and obscure the shipping location so people can’t figure out who they are. If they have built up a business and a reputation over the years why wouldn’t they want to market he knives under that name? Unless they know what they are doing is questionable and could hurt their reputation.
 
Let's pretend that all Fords became really popular over a few months, sold out everywhere, and now Ford dealers are selling every car/truck as they are released for $250,000 +

Would you buy one?
 
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bax229 said:
Let's pretend that all Fords became really popular over a few months, sold out everywhere, and now Ford dealers are selling every car/truck as they are released for $250,000 +

Would you buy one?
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I do remember a time when my local Toyota dealer was adding a premium on to the sticker price for new Tacoma's. I'm not sure if folks actually paid that price or if they used it as a tactic to negotiate down to MSRP sales price.
 
LastRodeo said:
I do remember a time when my local Toyota dealer was adding a premium on to the sticker price for new Tacoma's. I'm not sure if folks actually paid that price or if they used it as a tactic to negotiate down to MSRP sales price.
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Great idea...let's start negotiating with GEC dealers to get them down to the MSRP price.
 
Sacto said:
If they have built up a business and a reputation over the years why wouldn’t they want to market he knives under that name? Unless they know what they are doing is questionable and could hurt their reputation.
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Sacto said:
I don’t like the flippers and giant mark up, but I guess I understand it.
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Because most people don't really understand it.
 
ooitzoo said:
These are knives. No one ever died because they didn't get a particular GEC or paid slightly more for it.

I hate to defend "scalpers" / "flippers" since I agree its irritating but they do serve an important market function. They allow the distributor to recoup funds and re-invest reliably and quickly, they signal to the maker (and broader market) the true clearing price thereby telling them that supply / demand are not aligned at current pricing, and they take on risk with their own capital. These are all hallmarks of a properly functioning and efficient market.
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skyhorse said:
It's merely something called Capitalism vs the other system. God Bless America !
A command economy is a system where the government, rather than the free market, determines what goods should be produced, how much should be produced, and the price at which the goods are offered for sale. It also determines investments and incomes. The command economy is a key feature of any communist society.
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skyhorse said:
It's very simple , supply vs demand .
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^^^ This in a nutshell. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

If I spent all of my free time here, just looking for trivial things to complain about (over a First World hobby I feel very blessed to be able to enjoy), regarding the inequities facing certain knife maker's/knife models I happen to be a big fan of...then what's the purpose of even trying to enjoy this hobby, or any hobby for that matter? Hobbies are meant to, ENJOY.

There are a couple of knife maker's, whom I happen to be a very big fan of. Fortunately, my days of camping out on the exchange are far behind me, so it's become nearly impossible for me to find anything available anymore....with the exception of the model's listed by the flipper's here, who are jacking up the prices sometimes 2 fold on...

That's life! I have a choice: I can either buy it at the inflated price, or I can move on....OR, I could start a thread, & whine about it. < Fortunately, that's not who my mother & father raised me to be. If I don't buy or miss out on a knife, I actually feel like it's more of a WIN/WIN situation; because when I wake up the next morning (not having paid a $1000+ for a knife), I actually feel better, knowing I still have that $$$$ sitting in my bank account...instead of having yet ANOTHER inanimate object to carry around in my pocket.

And FWIW: I've owned a couple of GEC knives....maybe it's a good thing I didn't get this GEC addiction early on. :)
 
I don't know how many GEC's I have in tubes, and it has been several years since I bought one. I have never sold a knife, but when I do, I will sell them at fair prices, not the amount I think they are worth. Why, because that is what the market will bear.

A fair price is the maximum I can get someone to pay.
 
abcdef said:
I don't know how many GEC's I have in tubes, and it has been several years since I bought one. I have never sold a knife, but when I do, I will sell them at fair prices, not the amount I think they are worth. Why, because that is what the market will bear.

A fair price is the maximum I can get someone to pay.
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In your application of this term, what does the word "fair" mean? TIA!
 
skyhorse said:
It's very simple , supply vs demand .
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Yes, we all had fifth grade economics. :rolleyes:

But there were a ton of assumptions built in to those supply and demand curves. Do you remember any of them? Pretty much none of them apply here.

What they were trying to teach you with those supply and demand curves was how a free market generates effficiencies. Supply and demand curves intersect at a price point and a quantity. If that price point is much greater than the cost to produce, it generates huge, above-market-average, profits. Then other folks will see those huge profits and enter the market with new supply to capture some of those profits. The new supply from the new vendors will alter the supply curve to drive the intersect point down in price and up in quantity until an equilibrium is established at an intersect point where profits are in line with those for other products, and overall the markets operate at efficient levels generating the highest supply at the lowest prices that will sustain reasonable profits. The marvel of the free market!

Pretty much none of that is happening here or could happen here. This is not a "knife market." It's a "GEC knife market." And there is only one vendor and the supply curve is inelastic.

They really should stop teaching economics in K-12 because they don't do it very well and it seemingly inevitably triggers the Dunning-Kruger effect.
 
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