Three months ago I decided to downsize and consolidate my growing knife stash, sell more, buy less

DamascusBowie

DamascusBowie

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So I sold off a bunch, bought a few, sold a few more, thought I was doing well, three months later Ive got even more than I had before.

Granted, all the buys have been grab bags and orders from Busse, so m buying at better prices but still, Im finding that its just easier to buy than to sell. And when I do get around to selling again im going to be one of those guys listing 20+ blades.

I made this post hoping to get some advice to curb my collecting expenditures but halfway through I realized, who the heck am I kidding, these guys are hog enablers every last one of them!
 
don't downsize, as you get older you'll look back and wish your blade sack was a little larger. of course if you have some FSH or FBM's in there you wanna let go then yah you totally should downsize :rolleyes:
 
I tried this with guns long long ago- I wanted some different ones and decided to let go of a half dozen- Well, I ended up replacing every one I sold at significantly higher cost. For me it's easier to just give up and realize I'm the "end user" some things are meant to be.
 
StealthCaliber said:
don't downsize, as you get older you'll look back and wish your blade sack was a little larger. of course if you have some FSH or FBM's in there you wanna let go then yah you totally should downsize :rolleyes:
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I hear you loud and clear, its just a matter of where the keeper cutoff point is. As it is, I have a dozen or so never-let-go-keepers and about a dozen nice blades that I could possibly live without, or trade up for a grail, or pay some bills. Theres a line of perfect balance between the two categories, and Im going to find it :D

Although to Jerry's credit, its fairly easy to do with Busse and kin blades. They sell quick when priced reasonably fair which isnt the case with a lot of knives. Ive been trying to give away a cold steel wakizashi, even priced it dirt cheap and still couldnt move it, creating a third category of knives for me :)

edit to add, no FSHs or FBMs except for the BG FBM I just ordered, and shes a keeper for sure.
 
yeah ordered my fbms as well I tried to reprogram jerry hopefully it works :

@ JeryBusse when you get around the sifting through orders, you really reeally want to do that orange/black on black for the guy in louisiana

look into the light, how it swirls like pouring your favorite whiskey into a chilled glass, you are getting sleepy, when you awake no beverage will satisfy your taste , you will be infatuated with the idea of making a black/orange on black blade and imagine yourself enjoying your favorite bottle again at the end. you will now wake refreshed, thirsty and highly motivated to build a knife, you accidentally grab an infi blank instead of a sr101 but that's fine, because you are just sooooo thirsty.

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StealthCaliber said:
yeah ordered my fbms as well I tried to reprogram jerry hopefully it works :

@ JeryBusse look into the light, how it swirls like pouring your favorite whiskey into a chilled glass, you are getting sleepy, when you awake no beverage will satisfy your taste , you will be infatuated with the idea of making a black/orange on black blade and imagine yourself enjoying your favorite bottle again at the end. you will now wake refreshed, thirsty and highly motivated to build a knife, you accidentally grab an infi blank instead of a sr101 but that's fine, because you are just sooooo thirsty.

source.gif
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AHAHAHA :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
 
we're in op2w so if your heart can handle it hang in there before letting go of anything. I might have to let a few go if some grail items pop up :(
 
Just institute the one in, one out methodology.

Since you can't possibly "need" any more knives, if you take one in.....either you flip it if you don't like it like you thought you would, or you sell another.

After all, if you have 2-3 busse of each size class.....you have essentially a lifetime supply of blades unless you run them over diamonds daily.

Or you could just give up. I'm trying really damn hard to not become one of the addicts.
 
It's like women, and shoes.
My second wife had perhaps 150 pairs of shoes.
I had to build her a second closet taking space out of MY office to do so.

Her "habit" was a source of never ending frustration for me because I could never understand WHY she needed so many shoes !!! What made it worse was that she never I mean NEVER wore 1/3rd of them.

How can a woman collect soo many shoes just to sit, and look at them?
I'll never understand that kind of behavior!

Hmmmm. Reminds me of something... never mind.
 
I feel ya, bro.

I was buying well into the bubble of ~ 2008.

Ah well, some regrets.

More selling than buying since then. The market dynamics are certainly different since then. That's not good or bad, just different. YMMV.
 
co556guy said:
Just institute the one in, one out methodology.

Since you can't possibly "need" any more knives, if you take one in.....either you flip it if you don't like it like you thought you would, or you sell another.

After all, if you have 2-3 busse of each size class.....you have essentially a lifetime supply of blades unless you run them over diamonds daily.

Or you could just give up. I'm trying really damn hard to not become one of the addicts.
Click to expand...

Oh i tried this. It very quickly turned info, "ok im buying this knife because it's a great deal, but I'm going to have to sell a couple asap"

And that's where I'm at, I gotta sell seven knives now because of the ones I bought.
 
I've been up and down for almost 20 years--bought my first Busse, a Basic 5, in 1998 and have actively bought and sold Busses for the duration along with other knives, both custom and production.

The first time I became concerned was about three years later, after I joined BFC and realized how much I had invested. Just seemed ridiculous to have that much money tied up in knives. So I went through what I had and separated out what I really liked from what I didn't like as well. Sold off more than half and I felt better about it. Since then, as I accumulate excess and feel the urge every couple of years or so, I do the same thing again and get back in balance.

I've been up in the $40K range (total collection) a couple of times and then sold way back down. I have much less invested right now--only about 25% more than I had in the year 2000. To me that's a stable trajectory, and I'm happy with it. In the meantime I've gotten tremendous enjoyment from what I suppose has become a hobby, although I never intended it to be and never really even thought of myself as a "collector".

From calculations I've run, the overall net cost out-of-pocket over those years has been far less than many other "addictions" that have tempted friends and acquaintances of mine. For example, I have several buddies who've been into sports cars and race cars for years. I've owned one sports car, a Corvette with all the bells and whistles that I drove off the showroom floor in 2007 and owned just for pleasure for five summers--a complete blast all around. But costs including depreciation over that time ran just about what my entire blade collection is worth today--and that car was a one-time thing. Not to mention the fact that my knives retain probably 85-90% of original value.

Bottom line, I feel lucky to have found online blade trading pretty much in its infancy and to have lived through the last 20 years to enjoy it. Absolutely "No Regrets".

BTW, I still have that Basic 5. (Not for sale.:D)
 
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