80,000 is an awfully round number...
I wonder how the materials, labor and profit are divided up on a piece like that.
Last issue of Blade had the top 30 covers - one of which had an alleged $1 Million knife on it.
Anybody have that issue? or seen the knife? or been able to verify this claim?
Seems like in order to make a million dollar knife, you'd either have to work on it for several years, or use extremely, repeat extremely, rare materials and to do that you'd have to be able to front the cash for it. That's an investment not by the knifemaker, but by somebody else.
Look at it this way.
Gold is roughly $365 per ounce. A knife is typically 4-6 oz for folding knives up to 18 oz for daggers and bowies, etc. Let's be crazy and say, ok, up to 32 oz. (2 pounds)
If you made it of Solid Gold - that's still at most ~$12,000.
Now, let's say it takes you a full year working 40 hrs/week to make this knife. That's 2080 hours. Let's also say that you pay yourself an exhorbitant rate of $80/hr. That's still only $167,000.
Let's see, maybe you add in rare earth materials and platinum, silver, etc...
The most I could ever see a knife costing would $250,000 and that would be one heckuva knife and the knifemaker would be able to retire!
(By now, you may have noticed my dubious under(over)tones...)
