Custom Knifemaker Lee Williams' Anti-"Flipper" (Immediate Reseller) Stance

[SpySmasher]

Did anyone see Lee Williams' brief rant on Instagram about a pair of his customs being flipped (immediately resold) at the recent TKI show?

As a result of another chaotic and confusing TKI I will no longer exhibit at that show. [...] I will still make the same type and number of pieces available at one time this time of year but will find a different venue to make them available. I will do everything I can to make those pieces available to collectors directly.

I won't mention any names but both of my lottery pieces were flipped, one instantly at my table in front of my face.

The lottery winner MG never even picked up the piece to look at it.

One last comment. The two lottery winners will never purchase a knife from me direct again, especially via lottery. I reserve the right to refuse service/sales to anyone. Those two guys are no fly from now on.

It was bad for collectors

I'm just looking out for the best interest of the industry that pays my bills. Parasitic interests seem to be benefiting the most these days

We do what we do for collectors not the parasitic side shows that take advantage of our talents. Flippers are detrimental to my industry as they take advantage of willing collectors. My goal is to eliminate them from my distribution chain at all costs. "We owe them nothing!!!!"

This thread lost the original intent. " I will not be exhibiting at any future fifty fifty events"

Dealers are a pertinent part of our industry, but only a couple of them. It's the wanna be flipper dealers that cause collectors to leave the industry forever. The only way for us as makers to eliminate the flippers is to completely set up our secondary. I refuse to do that. I will leave that to my collectors. Rest assured I will find a way to sift the dregs so that only collectors get my lotteries. Auctions ... all bets are off.

Most dealers are pretty well informed about the state of the market as a whole and can give sound advice about this or that makers work and values. We need on the level dealers to keep this industry viable. We need the social media self proclaimed dealers to go away!!!!

so many times I have gone to shows and had my lottery buckets stuffed to over flowing or ran out of room on my sign up sheets. That's not a badge of honor. To me a badge of honor would be having every true collector in the room enter my lotteries even if I only get three entries out of 300 attendees. I do what I do for you guys.

I know I will never completely eliminate flippers from my lotteries. However, when a guy wins and doesn't buy the knife but instead brings the person he flipped to over to pay for it I get offended. Almost as bad as when a so called friend was selling my book spots.

He's probably going to find it just as impossible to regulate this practice as we do. As you might imagine, his posts set off quite a debate on his IG (as our threads about this do). Some of those posts above were in reply to different commenters.

Still it was nice for me to see a custom knifemaker who I consider one of my "grail" makers fight for his fans and collectors.

 

[Lapedog]

Did anyone see Lee Williams' brief rant on Instagram about a pair of his customs being flipped (immediately resold) at the recent TKI show?

























He's probably going to find it just as impossible to regulate this practice as we do. As you might imagine, his posts set off quite a debate on his IG (as our threads about this do). Some of those posts above were in reply to different commenters.

Still it was nice for me to see a custom knifemaker who I consider one of my "grail" makers fight for his fans and collectors.

Big ups to this guy and here’s hoping we see more like him. I’m all for free market but I can only imagine how a maker must feel to put all that work into a knife he hopes will be loved and sells it for what he considers a fair price, only to have these guys who have made a career out of this snatch it up and sell it for 2-2.5x what was intended.

 

[Brhowser87]

The only people who try to defend "flipping" are the flippers themselves. Without them there would be no debate either. Seriously it's a greedy process none the less.

 

[ndmiller]

So I think I understand but can someone confirm. He ran a lottery for a chance to buy a knife. The person that won the chance sold the chance to someone else in front of him.

I feel like it something else besides flipping, but something else bad to sell a unique chance to buy a custom knife in front of the maker. Low class maybe, not sure, never even heard of this before now. I would think the maker would return the ticket and pick another winner as the original winner clearly didn't want it.

 

[SpySmasher]

So I think I understand but can someone confirm. He ran a lottery for a chance to buy a knife. The person that won the chance sold the chance to someone else in front of him.

I feel like it something else besides flipping, but something else bad to sell a unique chance to buy a custom knife in front of the maker. Low class maybe, not sure, never even heard of this before now. I would think the maker would return the ticket and pick another winner as the original winner clearly didn't want it.

The lottery winner sold the knife to someone else at a markup.

 

[W. Anderson]

Wow. I think the whole flipper element sums ups what's wrong with society. Love of money is the root of all evil, homie. I read that somewhere I think.

 

[W. Anderson]

The lottery winner sold the knife to someone else at a markup.

That's pretty cold.


If I were the maker I'd be a bit unsettled as well.


I cringe at the thought of someone selling their bespoke CMFTW knife for a few extra bucks. It has happened. I'm sure there's regret already.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

Good on him. Flippers don't get under my skin as much as some here, but I don't have much use for them and I never buy from them. Anything to make it more difficult for them I wholeheartedly applaud.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Its the same as scalping concert tickets. It doesn't help the artist, it skews the market, and it artificially drives demand/value in a direction that the artist may not want. At its very best its neutral, at worst it is perilous to the artist.

I applaud this maker for taking his stand, and I hope that it helps move the knife buying crowd away from that behavior. Any sort of short term flipping just shouldn't have any place in the hobby. I can understand guys buying and selling handmade pieces as they would art. But simply upselling a knife out of the sellers pocket is just not right.

I don't think it can ever be stopped, its up to buyers to not make a market for flippers to operate in, and for sellers to decide who they should sell to.

 

[Petunia D. Feeble]

I understand the argument from both sides. The maker wants to decide on his/her prices and serve their customers fairly. The flipper sees an opportunity to capitalize on the maker's failure to price the knife at the apex of what the market will bear.

I don't think either standpoint is particularly immoral or unfair, as long as there was no prior agreement that the knife wouldn't be flipped. The same thing happens to almost all limited, high demand product.

I think the best way to circumvent he issue is to auction them all. They sell for whatever they sell for. Seems like it would be difficult to flip at that point, when you have to outbid all the other interested collectors to get it.

 

[AntDog]

Good for him. Flippers suck.

 

[b00n]

Three routes could work in my opinion:
A. Try the Ford Route and force people with a legal paper not to sell the limited product for a fixed amount of time )
B. Go the Porsche Route, don't make one offs and instead do collabs with OEM's, use your custom just a prototype, sell 50 instead of a hundred, saturate the market.
C. Out the shops as often as you can who do this kind of thing, the worse their reputation the less profitable it becomes.

None of it works perfectly, but there isn't too much else you can do.

 

[madcap_magician]

I still don't really understand this. At one end most people feel (as do I) that turning around at a lottery table and scalping the knife you just won at a huge markup to a guy right in front of the maker and lottery table is pretty scummy.

But on the other end, all of the arguments for why it's scummy apply equally to any act of selling at a markup, which is what dealers do and how the economy functions. I mean, literally. Arizona Custom Knives, Steel Addiction, BladeArt, and all of the custom knife dealers literally go to shows and buy knives to immediately resell.

I think the best way for a maker to avoid this situation is to do a combination of auctions and lotteries. The auctions will set market prices. The lotteries are an opportunity to get your knives into the hands of dedicated collectors. But if is important for you to sell some knives below market rate without having them scalped, you serialize your knives, only take lottery entries with real names, and ban anyone whose purchased knives show up for resale from participating in future lotteries.

 

[vanadium]

But on the other end, all of the arguments for why it's scummy apply equally to any act of selling at a markup, which is what dealers do and how the economy functions.

Some dealers actually sell knives at the maker's table price, and are buying the knives at below table price because they have a relationship with the maker. Some makers find this worthwhile because the dealer handles customs duties, chargebacks, returns, fraud and all the other garbage no one likes. That's a mutually beneficial system, which is sometimes easy to distinguish from the flippers — but you can always ask the maker if you're not sure.

 

[HappyDaddy]

Seems to me that the "crime" was flipping the knife too quickly and in the presence of the maker. I understand why that would be offensive to an artist. That said, if the owner sold the knife at a significant profit (scarcity + desirability = profit) days, weeks, months...later, how would that be perceived?

 

[Officer's Match]

So which Sprint PM2 was this?

 

[sXePhenomenal]

He sounds like an awesome guy most certainly makes him more fans than drives away

 

[Don W]

I never thought to be bothered by what other people do with their property.

 

[Duper]

The only way to stop the flippers is to not buy the product being flipped. If the product is being sold for an unreasonable mark up then walk away. Our own forum is full of them. We also feed the demand and give them a place to flourish.

It is a hard call. I have some GECs I have considered selling to recoup costs to buy some other knife but then I see the same knife at a 40% mark up on our site and I wonder if I sell it will the buyer flip it? Should I just ask what they might ask and get my cut of the pie? Those knives sit in my collection still.

Does anyone drive off the lot of their local Ford dealership and then sell their brand new F-150 for 50% more. Nope. But if that F-150 was a mammoth Bear Lake then look out. The sky is the limit. Traditionals seem to suffer the most. They are more unique and not mass produced. Not seeing many Griptilians at a jacked up price. Oh wait, put a red handle on a PM2 and now look out!

We all need to calm down for the situation to right itself. Stop, have a look and then just keep walking.

,,,Mike in Canada

 

[shinyedges]

Good on him, scummy flippers. The greed is outrageous, glad to see not everyone is turning a blind eye or outright condoning the greedy behavior.

Unbelievable how many people look away and don't care about greed until it directly effects them.