For a practical guide to which knives to buy, American's Test Kitchen gives pretty good advice:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6LggwoL_4
* https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/8204-three-esse...
* Under USD 75: https://archive.is/https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equip...
For most daily needs: chef's knife, pairing knife, serated/bread knife. Possibly useful 'extras': kitchen shears, petty/utility, boning, slicing/carving. They do not recommend sets.
I enjoy seeing glimpse into other people's niche hobbies.
I really enjoy markets like they describe and I've experienced them in Asia, but I have no idea where I'd find one in WA State.
This niche hobby became https://bernalcutlery.com/ which is a fairly successful Bay Area knife store
They also have an excellent book, covering both the subject matter (knives and sharpening) and how the company came to be.
Somewhat similar to the book of the Blue Bottle founder on coffee and his company path. Both are basically, as the GP remarked, are glimpses into other people's passion and deep fascination with a certain subject. Fantastic reads IMO.
* In fact, let me add two more books - Ivan Ramen and Tartine Bread. Similar introductions into lives of people and their obsessions with a specific subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Definitive-Introduction-Sharpen...
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Craft-Coffee-Roasting/dp/...
https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Ramen-Obsession-Recipes-Unlikely...
https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118...
If anyone knows other books of the same nature, I'm all ears.
I've eaten at the Ivan Ramen in New York and it was outstanding.
I have Tartine bread and this book is incredible
French knives are far behind Japanese ones, be it in metallurgy or design.
There are now inexpensive Japanese-style knives from China. I have a couple of surprisingly well-made Xinzuo-branded knives, each under $50.
Agree. There is a whole industry in Japan around knives that is much bigger than the French one.
Pfft. The knives in my kitchen are all original Damascus steel I use them to make food from recipes that were lost to time as well.
If you haven't got a few Mithril knives then you are no connoisseur at all.
I love that all my food now tastes of rust and light oil.
Guys guys please. Adamantium knives or get the hell out of my kitchen!
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The swipe against IKEA at the end seems out of place. In my experience IKEA knives have decent materials, design, and build quality despite the low price point. Maybe this is an artifact of the author's focus on resale value? IKEA knives have a low initial acquisition cost which contributes to extremely low resale prices, but they seem to function well and much better than Forgecraft knives.
I find ebay being overpriced if you are into collecting stuff so flea markets can be an option if you don't want to overpay.
i also find, with the arrival of catawiki (more a european market?), nice products for regular/normal prices seems hard to come by nowadays. Our "local" online market (marktplaats.nl) is therefore losing its value, local (town/neighborhood) (whats)app groups seem to somewhat take over this roll within the digital space.
This is a general trend worldwide.
OP's writing is nice, but he is de facto a scalper looking for the maximum amount of arbitrage. There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy really get a chance to find any.
What they're doing isn't illegal or forbidden, but it has completely destroyed the spirit of flea markets and secondhand stores as quaint places. And in response to becoming as hypercapitalist as the rest of society, a large contingent of people on flea markets has started to offer whole tables stuffed with cheap AliExpress / Temu crap. Or AI art being sold as "handmade".
The enthusiast offering artisanal coffee or lemonade or cinnamon rolls from his stall or food truck has quadrupled his prices, because if everyone else is gouging the visitor, why shouldn't he?
The same goes for secondhand clothing stores. They're wise to the scalpers looking to flip stuff on Vinted or whatever, so they have also doubled or even tripled their prices. It's an open secret that a lot of stores let the girls working there have a first lookover of whatever comes in.
Is this really scalping? He’s getting up early, using hours of his time and knowledge to select good knives, cleaning, repairing, sharpening then providing a selection of good knives for others to buy.
If you just want a decent knife I’d say he offers a good service that is cheaper and less risky than spending a day or more doing it yourself.
In general, if you want to do something you more often than not have to compete nation or even worldwide. It makes markets more efficient in the minds of some economists, but makes creating or finding valuable things fucking exhausting.
My local area used to be great to find old used woodworking tools for cheap. I stocked my shop and would occasionally restore and resell a tool or two when I needed to buy something bigger for my shop.
Then somebody posted about it on fucking Facebook. Now ragged out used tools sell for more than new price, and the buyers are always from cities 5+ hours away here to take advantage of the low prices since us country bumpkins don't know any better.
Used tools were a nice way for young people to get started in the hobby. Now they're too expensive for that to be realistic.
Is it really scalping? I have more interest than knowledge of what makes a good cookung knife. I could pay him for his knowledge and get a good and useful knife, or I could guess my way through half a dozen trips to the flea market with weeks of trial and error usage. Yes, one is a solution and the other is a journey, but if I'm committed to this particular journey, surf's up at 5:30 a.m.
> There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy
Usually the flea markets is open to everyone, it’s just that the ‘regular guy’ is not motivated enough to come early. There is nothing you find you cannot if you show up at the same time.
As a seller, I would rather sell to a reseller than not at all.The reseller does provide me a kind of service in return by finding me a buyer.
If I'm selling at below market prices I'm effectively giving money to the buyer and perhaps I'm upset that this money goes a professional rather than someone "in need"? Even so I'm not sure the reseller isn't also in need. Presumably this is their livelihood. They probably aren't super wealthy if they are scanning flea markets at 5:30am.
I don't know about your festival example. Sounds like the festival realised that they could charge more and did that. I think this happens all the time without any need for cake reselling.
Flea markets were always this way. Even in the 1970s, probaply before but I'm not old enough to know people who did it.
> No normal person is getting up at 05:30 to go to a flea market.
Of course there are, just go at that time and check. I know because I am one of them. 05:30 is not particularly early, and if you have a specific niche or quality standard and not just only a bystander, you know that is the only way.
I am also not sure why you believe this trend is new. The diamonds as far as I know have always been found very early.
They've effectively outsourced the work - they are paying this guy to get up at 5:30AM on their behalf. You go shopping for yourself, he goes on behalf of his customers.
> they've completely demolished the vibe of something formerly quaint.
I think you mean overlooked. Well, it's in the spotlight now, and gotten popular. More busy, less calm, less 'quaint'. The market exists for (as a result of) the sellers, of they are happy, consider that the target demographic has just shifted, and you are no longer it.
> Imagine if I went to a hippie festival..
What is a 'hippy-festival', does it imply some kind of values shared by the seller, or is that just a description of the usual buyer?
Feels a bit like the glass-makers fallacy.
Why can't the food truck do the same? Why do they need to go to the 'fancy neighbourhood' if the food truck can raise their prices in their current location (festival)? Do you think the food truck sellers believe this is a bad thing? Should the food sellers be prevented from earning more so that you can pay less - and surely the food truck sellers could continue charging less if they wished? Unless the festival organisers started charging them higher fees.
> The enthusiast offering ... because if everyone else is gouging the visitor, why shouldn't he?
Or because the fee they pay (food truck licence, parking/market fee, tax, etc) is already priced as such so they have little choice. In my country, rent is very high, that's why coffee is so expensive (and coffee places struggle to stay afloat) - the stores compete heavily, but the landlord extracts most of the value.
> The same goes for second-hand clothing stores.
Isn't giving "the girls" first look / priority morally the same? The 2nd-hand stores wise to this could just as easily advertise on vinted, no?
Describing all of this as 'hypercapitalist' seems hyperbolic to me.
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I consider good shears to be a daily requirement (they double as random available scissors as well). Specialty knives are really only worth it if you use it for its intended purpose at least once a week. We do have two chef knives as it allows simultaneous work to be done with my spouse, though.
More important is learning proper knife skills, including maintenance and sharpening. Even the best knives need to be taken care of.