LIMITED GEC SUPPLY

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Cricketycrack74

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Hey everyone ….there’s something I’m curious about and I want to see if anyone else knows anything about this. There’s probably already been a discussion on this and if so I apologize. I’m new to this forum. I’ve been collecting knives for a long time. I just buy knives I specifically like, well….what my teenage son and I like. It’s kind of a hobby we are into together. We have liked the GEC knives for a few years. We have two total that we picked up on eBay a few years ago. We found them at reasonable prices from someone just selling a couple of their own knives they had. Lately, I was thinking of buying another GEC but seeing the prices people are trying to get for these on eBay honestly just causes me to lose interest. While I like them, I can’t bring myself to pay $1,299 for a knife that went for $175 on KSF. No thanks. Anyway, I do still find it interesting to look and see what people are selling. From what I can tell on eBay….there are a handful of sellers that seem to have pages of new GEC knives with the prices just out the door HIGH. I thought I had read somewhere that orders on these knives were limited to around two per customer. How do these SOB’s acquire enough of these supposedly hard to get ‘limited quantity’ knives to open a store on eBay with prices 6x what the dealers sell them for? I’m sure there are people out there that will pay these prices to acquire a knife but if the knives are so hard to get, how does one person get access to 50+ knives? There has to be many people trying to buy one when they come out so how does one individual manage to buy enough to go into a lucrative price gouging business on eBay? Thanks
 
A couple of those EBay sellers  are GEC Distributors:
Kincade Brothers Trading Co.
Triple XXX Cutlery

I would advise that you avoid looking on EBay. Lots of GEC's are sold here on BF (*usually for profit) but if you go to the GEC Website and scroll through their Distributors there are always some GEC's available. You can also sign up for e-mail notifications from those Distributors when new releases become available (*though they're usually gone by the time you get the e-mail). It a game of patience. If you are looking for a specific pattern/handle material you can start a "Wanted To Buy" thread in the Exchange and see if one turns up.

Good luck.
Or, do like I do and just buy other Trads ;-)
 
I have not noticed any changes in the ease of purchasing GECs, during the past 2, 3 years.
 
Avoid ebay, that's a site for serious collectors who have disposable income. You want to keep your eyes peeled on the exchange and join a few facebook groups like the Great Eastern Cutlery Club and The Slipjoint Exchange where you can find more GEC's for sale by folks. Sometimes they're marked up a little bit but deals can be found every day.

Scoring them on a drop is hard, you have to be informed/ have your homework on how the drops work from various dealers and you got to be very fast.

Keep in mind that GEC makes as many knives as possible from every respective drop and for every knife that's being sold there are at least 10 people trying to buy it from any given drop.
 
Cricketycrack74 said:
I thought I had read somewhere that orders on these knives were limited to around two per customer. How do these SOB’s acquire enough of these supposedly hard to get ‘limited quantity’ knives to open a store on eBay with prices 6x what the dealers sell them for? I’m sure there are people out there that will pay these prices to acquire a knife but if the knives are so hard to get, how does one person get access to 50+ knives? There has to be many people trying to buy one when they come out so how does one individual manage to buy enough to go into a lucrative price gouging business on eBay? Thanks
Click to expand...
All good questions and I don't know the answers either. If dealers have customers that get special treatment, I suspect that neither the dealer nor the customer would go around talking about it.
 
The people on eBay that have dozens of GECs are flippers. Several of which do that for a living along with running auction companies. When your job is scouring the internet for knives to buy and resell you can amass quite a few. You will see GECs get sold daily at good prices on here and FB groups that will be on EBay the next week.
 
there are numerous threads on this subject, in fact there is a very long going one a few threads under this. It has been discussed ad nauseam.

here is the most recent one

What happened to GEC?

Their pocketknives used to be much easier to find & buy. Now, the retailers are out of stock when I look to buy. Even with the emailed notification being used by some. I see some folks know how to get the new releases before the distributors list them, good for them. :) But, I’m not paying...
www.bladeforums.com www.bladeforums.com

and a few pages further

Has Great Eastern Cutlery peaked in popularity?

It seems like the recent production numbers are saturating the market. The 36 pattern has more than 50 available on eBay at pretty small markups from retail when you consider eBay fees. 94/49’s are also available for retail plus fees or less. Same with 89’s. The recent 86 models seem to...
www.bladeforums.com www.bladeforums.com

Simply put it is a combination of FOMO, Flippers, new interest, and trade extorters.
 
Thank you all for the replies. I appreciate your insight. It’s something that has just really become obvious to me and I wanted to see what others thought. Some of the prices the Knives on eBay are listed at are mind blowing so I guess that’s what has really struck my curiosity. And I think it is a really shitty thing for some folks to be able to buy fifty or so knives from a dealer at the low retail price and then turn around and ask $800 for a $150 knife . I guess my point is that if these ‘flippers’ were not allowed to order so many then other people who would also like to order one for ‘themselves’ would be able to do so . But maybe the reason other people can’t order one is that they are all being bought with the attention to extort the price. I can’t encourage anyone on how to spend their money but there’s definitely one way we could help put an end to that and that’s if people refused to pay those unrealistic high prices for them. Don’t get me wrong….I totally get turning a profit. There’s nothing wrong w that. But this is something entirely different. These people are more or less the main reason that so many people can’t have a fair chance to own the knife they want. If one person orders enough to open a store on eBay in which they will mark prices up 6x the retail price then sure…..there won’t be many more knives to go around. But I will take your advice and look for other ways to find them. There’s really just a couple i would like to have , which is are a 93 lambs foot or Rams foot blade and an 85 swell end Jack easy open . Those may be hard to find, I don’t know a whole lot about it
 
The problem is, there are people who dont care about the knife or knives at all. Its all $$$$ for them which unfortunately has impacted every hobby, watches, knives, gear, you name it. It not the thrill of the hunt or chase for them, its just dollar signs. You can see them very easily in the for sale section. Usually tend to have a low amount or no forum participation except only in the for sale section. They trawl the for sale section for deals just to flip it on the groups or ebay. One of the facebook groups mentioned by another commenter, the slipjoint exchange is notorious for raffles and flippers. Not saying you wont get a good deal occasionally, but it is few and far and between unlike the old days. I remember a time when we thought maybe if dealers raised the prices it would deter the flippers, but boy did that back fire. Now we have to deal with higher prices, and even higher flipper prices. Lets see how the pending recession plays out...
 
Cricketycrack74 said:
Thank you all for the replies. I appreciate your insight. It’s something that has just really become obvious to me and I wanted to see what others thought. Some of the prices the Knives on eBay are listed at are mind blowing so I guess that’s what has really struck my curiosity. And I think it is a really shitty thing for some folks to be able to buy fifty or so knives from a dealer at the low retail price and then turn around and ask $800 for a $150 knife . I guess my point is that if these ‘flippers’ were not allowed to order so many then other people who would also like to order one for ‘themselves’ would be able to do so . But maybe the reason other people can’t order one is that they are all being bought with the attention to extort the price. I can’t encourage anyone on how to spend their money but there’s definitely one way we could help put an end to that and that’s if people refused to pay those unrealistic high prices for them. Don’t get me wrong….I totally get turning a profit. There’s nothing wrong w that. But this is something entirely different. These people are more or less the main reason that so many people can’t have a fair chance to own the knife they want. If one person orders enough to open a store on eBay in which they will mark prices up 6x the retail price then sure…..there won’t be many more knives to go around. But I will take your advice and look for other ways to find them. There’s really just a couple i would like to have , which is are a 93 lambs foot or Rams foot blade and an 85 swell end Jack easy open . Those may be hard to find, I don’t know a whole lot about it
Click to expand...

Why do you think the flippers are buying "fifty or so knives" from dealers? They buy the majority of their knives on the secondary market.
 
I think it is a little unfair to point to a 1200 knife on eBay and suggest that is the state of GEC.

I guarantee you that 1200 knife is very rare and desirable.

lots of GEC knives available on eBay for 200-250 dollars, some for much less.

i love these threads.
 
Sounds like this is resolved now. GEC just needs to sell me the knives direct at wholesale and all will be forgiven.
 
The speed that they sell out is alarming. I can be there waiting, ready, refreshing, submit my order the second it goes live, and every single color will already be gone. Literally no other knife company sells out like that, within like 30 seconds of going live, in every color, on every website. Then 15 minute later the knife is listed on Ebay and other sites at 150% or more mark up. I know these flippers have to be using scripts and bots to buy them all that fast.

I get why people complain so much. It wouldn't be so bad if GEC weren't the only USA company making fully traditional pocket knives at that level of quality. When you miss out, that's it. GEC isn't going to make that pattern again for years, and there is no other comparable company to buy from instead.
 
J85909266 said:
The speed that they sell out is alarming. I can be there waiting, ready, refreshing, submit my order the second it goes live, and every single color will already be gone. Literally no other knife company sells out like that, within like 30 seconds of going live, in every color, on every website. Then 15 minute later the knife is listed on Ebay and other sites at 150% or more mark up. I know these flippers have to be using scripts and bots to buy them all that fast.

I get why people complain so much. It wouldn't be so bad if GEC weren't the only USA company making fully traditional pocket knives at that level of quality. When you miss out, that's it. GEC isn't going to make that pattern again for years, and there is no other comparable company to buy from instead.
Click to expand...

I don’t know if it’s scripts and bots, or just that many people. I used to try to get on a certain dealer’s early reserve list for knives. Even when I’d get the notification while literally looking at my phone, instantly visit the website… the amount of others doing the same thing would make the site take a good minute to load, and by the time I made it in… nothing left. After awhile you recognize your own inferiority and decide it wasn’t meant to be.
 
GaiusJulius said:
I don’t know if it’s scripts and bots, or just that many people. I used to try to get on a certain dealer’s early reserve list for knives. Even when I’d get the notification while literally looking at my phone, instantly visit the website… the amount of others doing the same thing would make the site take a good minute to load, and by the time I made it in… nothing left. After awhile you recognize your own inferiority and decide it wasn’t meant to be.
Click to expand...
It’s all those people pretending to be working from home but really buying GEC :)
 
plus look how many go right back up for sale not even before all the distributors are done
 
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