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Why the $old???

tongueriver

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Dec 28, 2007
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In the exchange, when someone sells a knife, more than often he/she wipes out the price that had been asked and replaced it with $old, or SOLD, or some such. Why? I would like to know the price, even if the knife was sold. Wouldn't you? What is gained here? What is the goal? I am a little thick-headed at times and this must be one of those times, because I am not getting it.
 
I completely agree! And yet need to prevent editing the post after sale- sometimes topikstarter erases everything, including pictures
 
There are various reasons, mostly preferential. It's not a rule, folks just do it. You can sometimes find threads where they don't do it, or lurk the exchange for active sales threads and get the prices that way.
 
I think that if a Seller is going to edit the title; they should add SOLD but in front of the original title.
A potential buyer can be following a knife for weeks and instead of discovering that it's been sold, they can't even find
the original listing because the title has been edited to just "Sold".

As for editing out the price after a sale, while it does not serve the interests of buyers of the same/similar knives, it does keep people from using the site just to check on prices.
 
I've heard a variety of reasons, privacy being the most common one. Usually people saying the buyer wouldn't want people knowing how much they paid. In my humble opinion, that's just dumb.

Yes it is ridiculous, but I see people do the same thing on watch and music gear forums. No need to disclose the sales price, but leave the most recent asking price. Why all the cloak and dagger intrigue?
 
I never thought about asking the seller^ But you have to wonder how receptive he would be answering hunnids of PM's from inquiring BF memberso_O IMO it would be easier to just leave the asking price posted.
 
I never thought about asking the seller^ But you have to wonder how receptive he would be answering hunnids of PM's from inquiring BF memberso_O IMO it would be easier to just leave the asking price posted.

I get a request once in awhile and have always obliged. Some may not. At least to me knowing the price is only helpful to find a general range something sells for, and for most knives that isn't hard to determine. It is only the not so ordinary ones that are hard . Each transaction is unique event.
 
I agree with whats being said, but at the same time, wouldnt that defeat the point of needing a membership to ask for knife values if you can easily use the sales section as a price guide?
 
In the exchange, when someone sells a knife, more than often he/she wipes out the price that had been asked and replaced it with $old, or SOLD, or some such. Why? I would like to know the price, even if the knife was sold. Wouldn't you? What is gained here? What is the goal? I am a little thick-headed at times and this must be one of those times, because I am not getting it.
One of my pet peeves, I wish people wouldn’t do it, but it is their prerogative.
 
As a buyer: I'd like to know sold prices of knives for research purposes when a similar knife comes on the market.

As a seller: to wipe the numbers after a sale maintains a market-price for similar knives, allowing them to appreciate or depreciate in value accordingly, and allowing an item to be sold for what both parties agree that it's worth to them at that point in time.

Even if numbers are left in a closed sale that does not tell you the whole story. More often than not the deal was negotiated via PM/email and the final price is less than the original ask, and the final sale price would never be updated into the sale listing.

Searching completed sale listings via a retail platform like ebay is the only useful indicator for a given item that I've found.
 
I too have found issue with this practice. I can't see how it's a benefit to anyone.

More often than not, I'm selling something that I purchased some time ago and generally speaking I don't make an effort to remember the cost of everything I acquire. This leaves me needing to establish the market value of said product. The whole "sold" practice is so pervasive that there have been times I have had to look pages deep just to establish said market value. There have even been times where the item was rare enough that I couldn't find a thread with the price still in tact.

Because I believe in practicing what you preach, I make sure that with every single item I sell, I change the thread's title, post sold in my thread, or place a sold next to the price. Usually all of the above.

We should, as a community, begin to phase this practice out, I think. Unless someone has a compelling argument to the contrary, that's.
 
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