The difference:

A scalper, like for ticket sales, is only capable of buying out a very small fraction of the stock (tickets) and sells them as an extremely time-critical product.

Versus the Busse business model, where it almost seems like a majority portion of the stock is bought with the sole intent of reselling at exorbitant profit with no risk of devaluation via continued production or spoilage.

In other words, in classic capitalism, if the demand pushed the prices to 200% of the original retail price (which for simplicity we will assume is near cost), then somebody else would step in and offer a functionally identical product at the original (near cost) price. Because who would spend 200$ for a knife when the same materials and performance could be had at 100$. People who decide to buy the product with an eye to resale would have to be careful not to let their prices (profit margin) grow too high, lest they tempt competitors into the market. Plus they couldn't boost their prices out of sight if a specific model of knife continued to be made for significant lengths of time because there would be hundreds of thousands of items on the market instead of (perhaps) five thousand.

If you want the prices to get back to sanity, you have to either convince Busse to make popular models for more than a month at a time, and/or convince other companies to make a functionally identical product. The way it works now is not fair, but more relevantly it's not illegal or risky for the resellers so it will continue.

A strong secondary market makes everyone's knives worth more. And it lets those who can't participate in the competitive buying experience enjoy a Busse knife. These are good things. The upshot is that the knife buying experience is almost risk free and blades can be resold quickly if they're not liked.

While everyone likes to point a finger at people they think of as scalpers let me point out that we are ALL benefitting from their reselling activities. They are holding up our resale prices. And if for some reason you don't like the price, don't buy the knife! It's not like it's our God given right to purchase a Busse knife at the offering price LOL.



The process as it works now is completely fair even though you may not like it. The purchasing rules are posted and the times are posted. If you don't get a knife it's your own fault. If it's not important enough for you to show up for the limited time purchase and dedicate an hour of your time then it's not important enough to complain about either. If you know you can't show up then request a proxy to help you. And if that doesn't work suck it up and buy it on the secondary market AND THANK THE RESELLERS without whom you wouldn't have gotten a knife at all. /rant off.

This argument would hold a lot more water if there was more than one "offering" for each model of knife within a sensible span of time. There are a bunch of people on here that want a specific model which is no longer available. You're saying that because they want one NOW rather than two years ago when the one and only offering was made, that it was somehow a lack of initiative? What about those who didn't even know about Scrapyard knives when the model they read about was offered? There was just recently a thread about somebody who, like me, read about how awesome the Dogfather was and wanted one: only to find out that they are not actually made anymore, and the only way to get one is to pay twice the retail price at auction. You think that person had a pleasant Scrapyard experience or was "thanking the resellers", who encouraged the scarcity and high prices in the first place? We can ask, but personally I doubt it.

Rawr. I'll stop responding to this thread. My point is already made to those whom will accept it, and I'm not going to change the mind of the opposition with mere text.