Thread: Price Fixing

well i was just mulling it over.

I too will not bid if something is posted and really wnated by another member. I have gotten flack actually for posting good deals that I was interested in that apparently other members were too and didn't like it being brought to attention.

I did bid on that reaper even though i knew glen was bidding, but my bid was way lower than I KNEW it was going for. I did it more for the fun of bidding (which can be dangerous, especially back before snipes and sitting there refreshing with a second window ready with a bid etc.).

to me, they aren't worth it, not fairly common fair blades at least. if I could have a new one made to those specs for the same or less I won't go there.

I wonder how many members that have really cool blades, would be open to letting a guy borrow it for tracing, if he were going to make or have made one? I just wrecked a frederick reynolds last night (late night, belt grinder, horrible pitting, recipe for disaster), but I kept it because I love the shape and think it'll be a sweet pattern.

Red

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I thought if your snipe is set to be less than the current bid, it won't go through anyway...

Lee the current bid for instance on the Stainless DD was $28 we all knew it was going to go higher....
I was in at $125 IIRC so if you would have said Glen I am willing to pay $150 I would pull my snipe so we were not bidding against each other...Now you still might have won it at say $75 but more power to you... See???

This of course would not work unless the parties trusted each other.....

Originally Posted by gssixgun

lol

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Lee the current bid for instance on the Stainless DD was $28 we all knew it was going to go higher....
I was in at $125 IIRC so if you would have said Glen I am willing to pay $150 I would pull my snipe so we were not bidding against each other...Now you still might have won it at say $75 but more power to you... See???

This of course would not work unless the parties trusted each other.....

Ah! Yes that would work nicely then! I did not realize you could know how much the other guy was willing to pay, so yeah that makes sense if the parties trust each other

We had the "Buyers Club" for almost a year and never had a problem I want to say there were about 15 of us in there....

Interesting idea! - seems like a great idea overall really. I'd think that it would have to be in a password protected area of the forum though to make sure outsiders can't go into an auction armed with knowing the price he's bidding against.

In essence, we could have an internal auction on a blade by starting a thread, posting the link to one we want , state the highest price we're willing to pay, and if someone else here REALLY wants it and is willing to go higher, reply as much, then we all back off - or the two bid it out here until one cries uncle.

Of course someone else out there not knowing any of this may come along and blow you out of the water, but there are some significant benefits we can derive:

- each of us will be forced to really think about how much is enough for a particular razor, and get a reality check by others on that thinking

- we can all learn as someone that knows that particular blade tells us that it's only worth x or notices something in a photo that we all miss (good or bad)

- someone with experience with a particular seller can pass along info good or bad

- and the "designated winner" also knows the point at which he's not willing to pay any more, so if the guy that comes along and snipes him gets the blade, he's paid more than any of us here would have.

As to any blades that any of us may be selling, I guess there are 2 options. First, just keep it quiet and let the "free market" take its course, or second, let us know its going up for sale and someone here may just offer more than the seller expected. Another alternative I guess is that once announced, and if one of us gets into a bidding war with an "outsider" we can at least feel good about it knowing it's a brother we're giving the money to! :-)

I do like the overall idea - I've had the feeling that I've been in a bidding war or two with guys in here simply because you'd have to be looking at some detail on the blade or scales that some general bay merchant or casual buyer just wouldn't care about.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

We had the "Buyers Club" for almost a year and never had a problem I want to say there were about 15 of us in there....

I think this is a great idea, everyone here for the most part has been terrific when it comes to bidding from my limited experience. If I know through reading posts it's something someone specifically likes, i.e. DD Stainless, I'll usually try and reach out to someone to see if they are bidding on it. Will usually pull mine as the real values are sometimes found in razors that require a bit of restoration, something I know nothing about, except to send to Max, Glen, etc.. By doing this, I've sometimes found the opportunity to purchase the same blade restored for a bit more, which is worth it to me as I do not possess the skill set to bring the razor back to life.

In short, great idea.

Joe

IMHO, such a buyer's club would work great in smaller groups with average demand, but in larger groups with lots of demand, you're just asking for problems. Especially when demand will increase, because auction closing prices will theoretically lower because less people are bidding. Then the people who just won the $300 razors (today's prices) for $40 have $260 of left over "razor money," which increases future demand for razors. Increased future demand leads to increased bidding prices within the buyer's club for the right to bid, and this will eventually spiral out of control and implode. Maybe if no one were to get greedy and want to buy a ton of nice razors, this would work fine. Like, you can only try for one "buyer's club worthy" razor per month or two or something.

I do hope I'm over analyzing though and there is some way of doing this that makes sense and benefits all of us

Messing with the free market can be a disaster in the end, though Just ask the Fed

Couple of things I need to make clear here, this was not part of SRP, this was friends getting together to not bid against each other...
I totally agree if done in a large group it would fall apart....
You also have to realize I think SRP had about 3000 members back then

Originally Posted by Big Red

or do you all generally dislike the idea of trying to bring the market, which it seems is a lot of us, under control?
Red

as a side note, I'm organizing a group of razor sellers to fix prices a hundred bucks higher than they are already. if no one sells a razor for less than 300 bucks, everyone who buys a razor will have to pay 300 bucks or more, right?

market fixing is unethical. if someone is willing to pay more for something, why on earth wouldn't the seller try to maximize their profits? it's the founding tenet of capitalism. if a seller can get 300 bucks for an old blade, more power to them. maybe it's just me, but i don't think artificially manipulating the market (on either side) for your own convenience is the right thing to do.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

This of course would not work unless the parties trusted each other.....

yeah the good ole days when i trusted glen....

certain market manipulations are fine as far as i'm concerned, if you can pull it off more power to you.

i wanted to check the ebay market and listed few nice razors. i paid the extra fees to have a reserve. if i hadn't put that they would have gone for 20%-30% less which I thought was too little, especially considering the fact that worse razors sold for more around the same time. Ebay is a finicky thing, and it can go either way.
I say if some razors are overpriced, just don't buy them, buy the underpriced ones instead

I also don't mind leaving my friends who want a razor more than me not compete with my bids - I've pulled bids when I knew say Glen or Byron are willing to pay more. But I am not going to do it for somebody I don't know.