$1000 popscicle

[Tristan]

Well, you can cook a 3 michelin starred meal using ikea pots and ikea knives (the non serrated ones of course.) and an ikea chopping board. But you can also do it with a Bob Kramer knife, on David's board, using pure copper pans... The marginal utility is decided by the user/purchaser. But it isn't terrible because we only aspire to/lust after quality things, but we can make do.

Sometimes you can't make do, because you just can't get a good espresso out of a cheap supermarket superautomatic, but of course you can using some skill with a entry level boiler machine. Do you need the absolute best commercial machine? No... you just need something that can do the job.

We're lucky because in the knife world, almost all knives can do the job. Some just better or worse, but at a very low leve, a cheapish knife can already be made to do practically anything we need of it. In other hobbies, it really is a constant upgrade cycle to catch up to tech. That costs a lot more.

I could afford a Kramer if I really wanted to - but there is a big mental barrier that prevents me from wasting a big chunk of savings on another knife.

On a separate note, since Kramer switched auctions to his own proprietary site, it seems 5 of his knives on Ebay went at stratospheric prices to 2 different buyers. These two chaps are setting the price for the rest of the world. Fair? Well, depends on whether you're Bob, them, or us.

 

[Salem Straub]

A very interesting thread. I too believe that several of the great kitchen knife makers on this forum and in other places make knives not tangibly "lesser" in quality as tools than any of Kramer's. BK got famous a little while ago, an early superstar of kitchen cutlery and arguably still the only one. You can see the dude on TV programs, I heard him on NPR, I've seen him written about in the big papers.

It seems a lot of folks are trying to follow in his footsteps up a ladder to mega success, by simply making nice knives and building a reputation the hard way. I think the only hope if you want to get that well known is to market yourself in a savvy way to the general public, using the mass media. Some guys like Joel Bukiewicz (sp?) have clued into this. A lot of the celeb chefs and food personalities you see on TV are not the greatest chefs in the world- technically skilled, no doubt, but also people who see themselves as a product and package themselves for the world.

I think it's about building a mystique and an aura of prestige about your work. Like it or not, a publicist may do more for you than the ability to make a knife better than anyone else.

Personally, I like thinking that I make knives that are still affordable to people remotely within the same socioeconomic strata as myself. The fact that I'm dirt poor allows me to sneer at the bourgeoisie- don't know if that'd change if I got super successful myself. I'll stop rambling now.

 

[bkdc]

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get... and value is in the eye of the beholder. There is no way I'd pay the current price of a Kramer for the utility that I get. But others would. At that price, I'd never use the knife and display it as artwork. But there is a lot of effort put into a hand-made knife.

We all forget how massively devalued our currencies have become based on the cost of real human labor because we have for so long enjoyed the decrease in prices attributed to automation and productivity increases. You only see the massive currency devaluation when you look at hand-made artisan goods -- whether it's high quality furniture, benchmade shoes, or custom made knives.

 

[ecchef]

+1.

+2