Why are some customs rarely for sale or trade?

LAG3

LAG3

Joined
Aug 21, 2000
Messages
607
After being a member here for a few years, I've noticed some makers knives just seem to rarely be for sale or trade. Because I like them, and am always on the look out for one, it seems Terzuola and Crawford folders are rarely sold. Are some makers' knives just that good that folks hold on to them? Or is there some other explanation? What do you guys think? Thanks, Leo G.
 
It's a matter of how many pieces the maker has produced and is producing, along with market demand and excitement for the makers work. For example, if someones work is really excellent and is generating a lot of excitement, you might see it traded/sold a little more because (1) buyers are looking for pieces and (2) sellers know its an opportune time to demand a premium. A prime example are the Onions and Emmersons - they're basically better than money in the bank. Most collectors who posses them know they could demand a premium price for it at any time.

You specifically mentioned Crawford knives. Pat and Wes make great knives. I have a KFF a while back. I would rate it as excellent quality. But at the time they were making so many knives, in the aftermarket they weren't selling well. I paid much less than their retail for an essentially new knife. On the flipside of that, when I realized it did suit my needs (choil was too pronounced for me) I wasn't able to sell it for any more than what I paid. Maybe these days they don't come up that much because people realize that they've got excellent knives but also knives that may not demand premium prices on the secondary. Just my speculation.

~Mitch
 
"tactical" knives, utility knives (small hunters etc) as well as some bowies seem to sell well with the crowd here. thus, those types of knives are most likely to be featured.

most knives are also $750 or less... with the vast majority of knives being in the sub $500 price class.

custom traditional knives (slipjoints) and more decorative pieces (ie art knives) are not as popular with the typical knife buyer on bf and are less likely to be offered for sale.

For example, Richard Rogers is one of the best makers around and I recall only one of his for sale ... and it did not sell as fast as many of the "hot" makers here.


some knives are also just plain rare or have a fanatical following
 
Great thread - I've often wondered about this.

Note that some purveyors who specialize in 2nd hand are not very visible. Take Cutting Edge for example, they often have half a dozen unique pieces per month, but you cannot get a good pic of them anywhere. They publish a catalogue, where you get tiny B&W pics, and the listing - without the pics - is available on line. I think they take a 25% commission, so I'm sure many people prefer not to sell. There are other purveyors who are not online at all.

EBay is a format which is great if you want to sell quickly (generally at a discount) but not good for displaying your knives over a period of time.

JD
 
Joss,

I think you miss the point of the 25% commission.

You are paying for someone to spend their time and resources to sell your knife.

Purveyor's can give you access to resources the average person does not have:

1) Ability to accept multiple forms of payment to include credit cards. For those of you not familiar with merchant services of banks. There is a set up fee, a monthly fee (if you don't meet your miniumums an additional fee) and of course the percentage that the credit card company takes every month from you bank account.

2) World Wide access to the knife you have for sale.

3) Pre-qualifiying potential customers for a particular knife.

4) Extended communications capabilities. To include a web site, phone, cell phone, fax and email as well as possibly a catalog. As well as the cost of these.

5) Then there are the Internet costs. Cost of the web site, Cost of a web master to manage your site (to include taking pictures, maitenance, etc.) Then there is the time to load the photo, manipulate the photo, do the description, etc.

6) Show costs. How about all the costs associted with attending and setting up a t a show where your consigned knife will be displayed at.

Lastly, how much time and effort are you willing to spend to sell that knife. How man emails, phone calls and letters will you answer about a particular knife. How much money will you spend to advertise that this knife is for sale. Once you understand that as an individual your marketing

Question, if you have a $1,000 knife are you going to send it to someone to look at that you don't know?

If you answered no. Then you will understand why that person won't send you $1,000 in money orders to buy the knife.

So while you may have a seller with the right knife at the right price and a buyer with the money. There is a good chance they will never come together because of the perceived "risk" involved.

While it is true that there are knives that will sell rapidly for retail prices and some even sell for a premium.

Fact remains, that most knives bought and resold either on the fourms or Ebay are generally going to sell for lese than retail.

So it seems what it comes down to, is what resources and outlets do you have to sell your knives. Combined with how much is your time worth.

I agree 25% may be a little high, but it is not that out of line.
 
Les,

I understand perfectly the point for the 25%. Nevertheless it *is* a fairly high amount, and might be conducive to many owners keeping their knives rather than sell them. When you factor this amount in, it means that the owner has to set a price 1/4 higher than what they bought the knife for in order to breakeven. As we know, not that many names allow for that. If they have to sell for less, then they loose money, which might make a difference between the decision to sell and not sell.

Generally speaking, I think that the 2nd hand market for custom knives is in its infancy, and that many media are still inefficient. Cutting Edge is fundamentally a print medium. Not only is the internet not their main focus, it doesn't receive even the bad treatment (poor pics) that the print medium gets. Objectively, I do think that the 25% is high, but I don't know what it compares to in other areas (antiques, fine watches, etc...)

As to the costs you list, they are very real, but on the other hand the marginal cost of adding 1 knife to the inventory is tiny. What I mean by inefficient is that there is - right now - a push going on to decrease *fixed* costs among knife purveyors. Obviously, you are well aware of that. But for the moment, collectors who want to sell their stuff 2nd hand suffer from a generally inefficient set of options.

I am willing to bet that within 15 months, eBay will have a fixed price / no time limit venue, and that will become a top venue for the 2nd hand market.

JD
 
I agree with essentially all of Les's points regarding purveyors.

I spoke with Paul Bausch of A G Russell at the BAKCA show last weekend. Most of the stuff they sell in the Cutting Edge is purchased by Paul and Amy at 50% of what they think they can sell it for. Yes boys and girls, that is half of what you probably paid for it. I would suggest that you can almost always do better on Ebay, FWIW. I didn't get a number on their commission fee.

On the original question - once you start buying knives that cost $400 and up, a 25% - 50% loss is a pretty big chunk of money, so cycling of your knives becomes very expensive - there is really no impetus to sell at such a big loss unless you are taking the hit to fund another project or getting out of knife knuttery.

Plus, if you own a high quality "tactical" folder, what is it that you are going to replace that folder with? A ruby and gold encrusted version? Probably not. Are you going to sell that Bob T. knife so that you can pick up 7 or 8 of the lastest CRKT collaboration models? Not likley. I would argue that it is surprising that ANY of these high end maker knives end up for sale at the bust prices that they do. Usually, it is somebody that is really a knut :) and will take the hit to investigate a new maker, a new blade steel, a new blade style. In some cases, people buy on credit and get themselves into money trouble, so 70 cents on the dollar is better than nothing at all.

I am still amazed at how many incredible deals show up here on the forums as it is. :cool:
 
Originally posted by Architect
Plus, if you own a high quality "tactical" folder, what is it that you are going to replace that folder with? A ruby and gold encrusted version? Probably not. Are you going to sell that Bob T. knife so that you can pick up 7 or 8 of the lastest CRKT collaboration models? Not likley. I would argue that it is surprising that ANY of these high end maker knives end up for sale at the bust prices that they do. Usually, it is somebody that is really a knut :) and will take the hit to investigate a new maker, a new blade steel, a new blade style. In some cases, people buy on credit and get themselves into money trouble, so 70 cents on the dollar is better than nothing at all.

I am still amazed at how many incredible deals show up here on the forums as it is. :cool:
Click to expand...

Makes sense. I think that many of those deals come from distressed collectors.
 
The 25% only sounds high if it's sold at the price you can sell it for, but i believe with the customer base Les and AG has they most likely can sell it faster and at a better price then we can on the forums, that's why i think 25% is fare. Also think if you have a bunch of knifes to sell it's a lot easier. BTW 25% is the standard for custom knifes, never seen it lower.

Case in point, i have a 1860 Ames Calvary Sabre from the Civil War in ex condition, i know a place that can sell it for around $1400 to $1600, if i ever sell it i would let them sell it for me, less 25% commission to me is more then i would expect to get for it myself and i only paid $350 for it about 15 years ago

James.
 
The problem is not whether it's fair or not. It's fair, of course, since it's a free market. It's just that, although fair, it's a large enough amount to slow down 2nd sales.

JD
 
how did this thread become about purveyor's charging a percentage for consignment? Are you saying people are selling these knives through purveyors for security reasons and that's why they don't often show up here? Respectfully, Leo G.
 
Joss,

I hope and I believe you are right about the potential Ebay venue. There is a real need for an easy to access permanent storefront style space on that venue. Something that can be used to increase the available knives database from some tens of thousands of knives to many hundreds of thousands.

It is one thing to go out and buy a dozen knives for your EDC that you can simply stuff into a corner of your sock drawer. When that number begins to climb to 50, or 100, or more; the collection begins to become a logistical burden. How are you going to store, maintain, inventory, or protect all of these items? Can you find a place to keep them safe, or to keep your kids safe from them? Eventually most collectors reach a point where they need to cycle their collection. To trade the stuff that doesn't quite fit anymore in order to find the space or raise the funds to aquire better fitting and more advanced examples.

There are plenty of dealers and options available to help collectors with very marketable items. But, it is much harder to move more basic items. Most collectors begin with basic production knives and common antiques, and these are the items that many of us might shed if we can find an efficient way to do so. Likewise, we know that there are many collectors out there working hard to find some of these very same knives to improve their collections. But, these are small niche markets, unless I have a great many of these knives, it is not really worth it to chase these markets and specialist dealers down. So they sit in our collection occupying space, collecting dust, and tying up a few more dollars that we probably would prefer to use elsewhere.

Greater market efficiency would be a big plus for all of us.

n2s
 
I am not sure I agree about Crawfords being unavailable. I only got the knife bug less than a year ago and I have acquired on average over 1 Crawford per month. I have passed on at least three or four times that many that have been offered in various forums, and missed out on a few real scores that I would have liked to get. Ya just gotta be obsessed and look harder! Matt
 
I enjoy hand-made knives as a buff, and do not do it with the expectation of breaking even or making money on it. Like any buff, scads of money sometimes gets spent in the pursuit of the enjoyment.

For example, my friend has a boat. He thinks I'm nutty, but this is a guy who spends $400- $500 a week on gasoline! He's as happy as a pig in sh*t.

So, I wind up with some knives that don't have the feel they formerly did, or never had the feel; only eye-appeal. These are the ones that I don't happen to select for quite some time for carry duty. So these are the ones that I would sell.

I'll sell them for much less than I paid simply to liquidate them fast. I have a feeling that some folks who put up a knife for sale and keep the price to the same that they paid or within fifty bucks or so really don't want to sell. I've turned a bunch around and now have the scratch to get a few more.

I would imagine that this will stop eventually. Not totally :) , but I'll wind up with a small hand-made collection that will have the quality/eye-appeal/ handling/usefulness in a variety of areas.

As to why some are available and not others, the second post was very informative.
 
Supply and demand.I have a safe full of knives that will go to my heirs.Love to "possess those pretties".Isn't that what it is all about?:D
 
Joss. Ebay already has the type of venue youre talking about. Sellers have the ability to offer an item through their "Ebay Store", which allows the seller to showcase items for extended periods of time for VERY little money, and at fixed prices. The ONLY real drawback, unless they have changed it recently, is that these store items do NOT come up when you do a regular word search for a particular item. I believe its still the case that only auction items come up in word searches and fixed price store items do not, which obviously, drastically limits your exposure. If Ebay would allow fixed price store items to come up along with the regular auction listings in a regular word search, i would definitely open a store, actually, i already have one, but never use it for the reason stated above.

Imagine how nice it would be to go to Ebay, do a simple search for ie. Jerry Corbit, and get a list of 10, 20, 30... Corbits currently for sale from several different purveyors/collectors. Throw in easy Ebay or PayPal payment options, good pictures/descriptions etc and youd have a hell of a market force.

Ebay of course has good reasons to prefer auctions over fixed price store listings, they make more money with auctions since auctions sell the item at a much faster rate than long-term, fixed price store listings. Seems to me, to make store listings worth their while, theyd have to increase the final value fee a bit, so youd end up paying a higher percentage of the final sale value of a store item than an auction item, and still, it might be worth it, depends on how greedy Ebay is.
 
Yeah, Amazon has a similar feature too - which actually does surface the items in Search. It's called zShop.

JD
 
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