Telltale Mark

[DonVoigt]

Originally Posted by alvin

Morphy Auctions is interesting today. A reblued 42 sold $5500, and there is 15% on top of that. Who's bidding on that.. but on price level, that's nothing comparing with a brand of small knife called "Bowie Knife".

Heard of "Bowie Knife"? I know nothing about it... probably rare,. Just being rare does not mean it worth much, but obviously there are many people collecting those and they competed with each other. Many those small knives sold $30K, $40K, $50K, $90K etc today. If not seeing those sale myself, I had thought those knives just being rare junk... you never know.

Perfect example of trying to analyze something logically without any knowledge of what you are talking about.

Bowie Knives are highly collectible, there were and are many makers, some are quite rare and there are many styles. Condition impacts pricing- just as it does with lugers and brooms. Books have been written about collectible, historic "bowie" knives- not the 10 for $26 that Paul mentioned.

Apples and oranges.

[alvin]

>> Perfect example of trying to analyze something logically without any knowledge of what you are talking about.

The purpose of illustrating this bowie example was not trying to analyze it from technical angle. But look at it from business perspective. Just searched "Bowie" on ebay and amazon, there are tons of knives selling from $5 to $150. Those must be fakes then.

On structure, knife's structure is much simpler than any firearms. No law controls making either. Given the eye-popping price of "genuine antique Bowie", in theory, there should be lots of high quality fakes too. Unfortunately, that's the way.

Hopefully, the bidders of those Bowies know what they have won. Of course they know? Not necessarily, there was bidder winning reblued 42 Mauser banner for $5.5k,,,, you know, the risk of $50k bowie is 10 time higher, and, consider complexity factor, the risk could be 100 times higher.

And, "handmade" by itself could be a big trap. Handmade means it can appear in any form. In C&R firearm domain, collectors compare samples against samples, compare thousands, or even tens of thousands of samples to summarize out something. In handmade world, comparison obviously won't work well. How about by provenance? Is there any provenance mentioned in auction... no... even mentioned, is that story sound?

Conclusion: playing bowie is like playing fire at home. Technical detail is secondary. That's decided by its nature, not by its details It's for people loving challenge.