Your Worst Purchase

[Daniel]

Jean, I would gladly trade a Remington for one of your swords, I won't guarantee it passes Shinsa though :-)

 

Wanna speculate?

 

Kind Regards

Daniel

[Jean]

Even if it is mumei (the Remington), Daniel? ROFLMAO

[Pete Klein]

I suppose if you had asked for a 'Warhol' you'd have ended up with a 'Pop Tart'...

[Brian]

Nah, I'm pretty sure a pop tart is called a "Lady Gaga"

 

Brian

[Pete Klein]

Harumph.  Out tarted again!!! 

 

(I bet she rides a Pop-cycle)!

[Jean]

Guys, we are reaching here the highest spheres of spirituality clap: clap:

[Grey Doffin]

Or is it the lowest form of American pastry?

Grey

[Kronos]

My worst purchase is probably a sukesada katana I bought in December. I've learnt a lot in just six months since and probably overpaid a lot. It's balanced out though by something else i got at the same auction for <$500 that I feel might turn out quite special.

[Loco Al]

You have some twisted ways of looking at things Alan.

Since Nihonto has no price list, how on earth can you be overcharged by $10K, since someone paid that (you)

That means that is what it is worth or was worth at the time. And if you sell it for a loss, that is your business....you chose to make it worth less. And then how on earth do you now consider yourself to have lost $20K?

Then the dealer sells it for a profit...of course.....that means it was again worth more. I think this profit/loss thing is in your head, and not based on reality. High end dealers set a price. If it isn't worth that, then it doesn't sell. What if one of the swords you bought from him is now worth $10K more than you paid for it? Does he get to bitch about it and claim you made unfair profit, or are you restricted to selling it only for what you paid?

It's not always about money. You like something, you buy it. If it is worth more or less later, so be it. If you want to speculate, buy gold or silver or oil. Don't buy art.

 

Btw, Pete was inferring that the first sword was the one that put him on the path to this unhealthy hellish obsession we are involved in.

Oy, so much angst! (said with a Yiddish accent)

 

Brian

I guess that I do have a twisted way of looking at things. Perhaps that is why I changed my display name to Loco Al.

 

You have to understand that when one learns that the price of an item which one has previously purchased was perhaps grossly inflated (perhaps well beyond what should be considered a fair price to include a reasonable profit margin) relative to what it's true market value should be, and was perhaps overzealously advertised as something more special than it truly is (in order to justify the high price tag), then that might tend to embitter one a bit. Live and learn. It's all water under the bridge now.

 

My math was flawed. I figure that I am down about $10,000 on the deal (not $20,000). If I had kept the sword and tried to sell it to someone else, perhaps years later, then I think that I would have lost even more. Possibly another $10,000. That is what I was trying to say. So actually, I consider myself lucky to have disposed of the sword in a timely fashion. It was a Tokubetsu Hozon sword, by the way, and would likely never have gone Juyo.

 

Alan