Advice re: Selling GEC Knives

[kootenay joe]

If you follow GEC knives you know that many sell for very high prices, sometimes as high as $800, or more if handles are mammoth. It is difficult to know which ones are most sought after as it depends on pattern, year made and handle materials.
I have sold a few GEC knives in the "For Sale" forum here and have priced them for amounts that gave me a profit. But often i have subsequently seen the same pattern/year/handles sell on ebay for $200 or more than what i sold my knife for.
I was o.k. with this but my financial circumstances now are such that i should try to get closer to 'market value'.
For many GEC knives 'market value' is not known because an exact match in ebay 'Sold' listings does not exist.
I am seeking advice about listing GEC knives here on AAPK and instead of posting a price, i ask people to send me an offer. After a set period of time ( maybe 48 hours ?) i would sell to the highest offer.
Are there any rules here that forbid this ? Some forums say price must be stated.
And, if it is allowed, do you see this as a reasonable thing to do ?
I am looking forward to learning what AAPK members think about this.
thanks, kj

[orvet]

I'm not quite sure how you would do that. Many years ago Bryan tried to get an auction site going in conjunction with AAPK. It has been gone for several years now and it was pretty much a failure in terms of an auction site. AAPK was a lot smaller, probably by a factor of 10 than it is today.
I would suggest for the time being, research the knife and list the price that you think is retail or perhaps even high retail, and consider offers. That's about the best I can think of at this time. We used to have a forum where we could do an auction for charity but that was not for the general sale of knives from our members.

[XX Case XX]

i ask people to send me an offer. After a set period of time ( maybe 48 hours ?) i would sell to the highest offer.

What if the highest offer doesn't come anywhere near what you would have initially asked? Would you let it go? I've noticed on eBay, people make "lowball" offers intentionally to try and get that knife for a steal and it gets tiresome going back and forth.

I'd just list it for what you want and roll the dice.

____________
Mike

[deo-pa]

Roland, your reputation here is so solid and you are widely known as accepting offers and bending over backward to be fair, I would think your best bet would be to simply proceed as follows. Through either research or gut instinct come up with a range and then list it at the very high end. If it doesn't move then add "offers accepted" to your post. If it still doesn't move then drop the price with offers still accepted.

Many of your postings sell very quickly and the above strategy will likely stretch out the sales cycle, perhaps by quite a bit. But if that is acceptable it seems like it should yield higher prices over the long haul.

The problem with not posting any price and just a "make on offer" listing is that you may have to contend with annoying lowball offers. Also many folks (I'm one of them) buy knives I had never planned to purchase but somehow the knife "spoke" to me. Being ignorant of the "correct" or "fair" price I can use the seller's listed price as a guide. I ask myself, "Does his asking price of $X seem at all reasonable?" If no I just move on. If yes I'll either jump on it because "knife lust" has set in and I have to grab it before someone else does, or I'll hem and haw and maybe make an offer.

Dennis

[ea42]

Roland you could check the "completed listings" on Ebay to see if there's a sold knife that's similar to the one you want to sell, then use that price as a starting point. If the price was inordinately high you could go with the previous bid. Checking completed listings definitely gives you a pretty accurate idea of what the current market is.

Eric

[edge213]

Just do what other AAPK stores have been doing, put a ridiculous price on them and see what happens.
Obviously there are knuckleheads that will pay the price.

[kootenay joe]

I am glad i asked because these posts are helpful and suggest that simply asking for offers is not likely to be a successful approach.
Start by setting a high price and see what happens as suggested by Dennis and others seems the best way.
My problem is that i don't feel 'right' asking for a lot of money. I have been this way all my life and is why i now find myself in financial difficulty.
Using ebay for pricing does not work for many GEC knives. GEC collectors often want a specific pattern from a specific year with specific handle type. An exact match of all 3 is needed to know how strong the demand is.
I recently watched 2 GEC auctions for nearly identical knives, one made in 2016 and one in 2018. One of them sold for double what the other did. A dedicated GEC collector likely could have predicted this, but i cannot.
I don't want to 'feed a flipper' but i also don't want to gouge an AAPK member who wants the knife for his own collection.
If you do not follow GEC auctions you might not realize how 'hot' this market is, but not for every GEC knife. Some of them go up in price by $100-$200 every few weeks and now sell for 5-6 times the original price. However i will not price my listings for these extreme amounts. Somehow i see it as unethical.
Thanks for helping me sort this out. I appreciate the wisdom of the 'group'.
kj

[herbva]

Roland, I suggest just a small "tweak" in the advice David (above) offered. Offer them in you store at the prices David suggested, but put in a "or best offer" option. That way, for some of them, you may get the high prices these knives seem to command these days, and for others you have the option of accepting what you may feel are reasonable offers, and for the rest you may want to put them up for grabs on ebay if they don't sell here. Just my 2 cents. Good luck!

[deo-pa]

Roland,

Another option occurs to me. Reading between the lines I sense that you may have a lot of GECs in your safe. How about assembling them all in one sale and asking a VERY high price / OBO? The goal being to attract the GEC collector with deep pockets who has no intention of flipping them but intends to hold them for years as an investment.

That sale should take place on eBay not here to get the best exposure. Now I know you don’t personally sell on eBay but offer your knives through several consigners, who take a big chunk. You have many friends here who would like to help you through challenging times and one of us would gladly list them for you. I would gladly do it for no charge. However, there are others here with many more eBay sales than me and a lot more knife “street cred” who would also help. If you should feel a bit guilty about such an arrangement then offer a modest listing fee or a nice knife as a gift.

It would mean a lot of work on your part doing the photos and detailed descriptions but I think the potential payoff would be significant. The advantage would be the chance for a windfall and the opportunity to leave the listing up indefinitely and watch the offers roll in. You would get a good sense of who was truly interested and would probably find a serious buyer you could negotiate with to close the sale. I suspect such a sale would be the talk of the town in the GEC community.

Dennis

[kootenay joe]

Thank you Herb. Yes, David's post is solid business advice. I do not have a store here and as Dennis has said i do not sell on ebay myself. I do mail vintage knives to an ebay seller in Portland OR. The problem for a knife seller in Canada is that nearly all knife buyers are in USA and many will not bid when they see the cost of shipping with tracking is $20. I believe there is more bidding when knives are listed by a seller located in USA so likely i end up with about the same money even after the seller takes his cut.
Also, I am computer phobic and find it very difficult to make myself try something online that i have not done before. Hence i have avoided opening a store online.
Dennis i only have about 18 GEC knives left. I had about 55 and have sold most of them by listing in the AAPK "For Sale" forum.
I enjoy posting in the For Sale forum and see it as interesting even to those who are not thinking of buying. Every listing shows a fine folding knife and this is what we like to look at.
I get a sense of pleasure from the buyer being happy with what he received for what he paid. This is as important to me as the money. Hence, I think i will continue to use the AAPK For Sale forum but be more thorough with checking ebay for sold prices and then list my knives for prices a bit lower than what ebay shows. I need a happy buyer and we all like it when we get a knife for what we see as a 'good deal'.
kj