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.
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.
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.
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.
Like I said, they're not doing anything forbidden, but they've completely demolished the vibe of something formerly quaint.
Imagine if I went to a hippie festival, bought trays and trays of cake from the food truck, then walked them two blocks over to the fancy neighborhood and started flipping them for triple the price. Word gets out, and a few years later the food truck has raised its prices significantly and then the rest of the festival follows.
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.
And you used to be able to find diamonds in the rough on flea markets, secondhand stores and even on online places like eBay, until 2013ish. That's when the professional reseller became more and more pervasive.
Since you seem to think that flipping and scalping is a valuable addition to society, we have nothing to discuss.
Have you never fished at the dawn, hiked for a sunrise, spent the night watching the stars? I think you may try to expand your horizon about other people hobbies.
As kgwgk points out [*1], the proposition wasn't "5:30AM isn't particularly early", but rather "5:30AM isn't particularly early to visit a flea market".
Despite being US-centric, this is also an international forum, values may differ. I initially assumed the market was French/European when they mentioned looking for vintage culinary knifes.
> Since you seem to think that flipping and scalping is a valuable addition to society, we have nothing to discuss.
Not interested in good-faith discussions of differing viewpoints?
I'm not going to downvote you, but I think this is pretty narrow-minded for a discussion forum like this.
5:30 is particularly early, especially when it involves normal people's hobbies.
> and if you have a specific niche or quality standard and not just only a bystander,
This is what the OP was saying, that this space has been been invaded by scalpers, people who do tend to have higher "quality standards" because it's in the nature of their "job", they've become aware that the higher quality stuff sells for more so that they're actively chasing it.
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.
> 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.
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.
What people are really complaining about is that the hobbies of thrifting and collecting have been overrun by professionals. That’s going to suck for any hobby that involves buying and selling.
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.
I dislike scalping where no real value is added to the service provided beyond getting there first, but this guy uses his skills to pick out good knifes, does quality assurance and presumably sharpening, and sells them with the ability to inform buyers about the type of knife and its intended use.
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.
From what I know Chinese copies focus more on the VG10-like steels.
Seems like some VG10-equivalent from various pages advertising it
It's sad that the market is flooded with high-performance stainless steels which are inherently worse and more expensive, just because the average person is afraid of rust and knife maintenance.
* 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.
More important is learning proper knife skills, including maintenance and sharpening. Even the best knives need to be taken care of.
So much so, that I went out of my way to get the longer chef knife/gyuto version of it off eBay last year! It's freaking fantastic! They're both well maintained now, honed often and my two go-to knives over a wusthof and bunch of Misen knives
My conclusion is that very few normies care about edge quality and most of those that do are making some sort of hobby out of it and want to buy something excessively fancy. See also Japanese knives; I'm sure they're very nice but two minutes with a whetstone will get any shitty piece of metal sharp enough to cut some chicken. There's no reason to overthink this stuff.
There are many quality whetstones to choose from and a lot of debate on the absolute best. But TLDR, KING is generally highly rated:
https://www.amazon.com/Accurate-Whetstone-Sharpener-Effortle...
If there's a local community college or trade school with a culinary program, they might sell stuff like this or at least be able to direct you to suppliers.
Normies DO care about edge quality but they DON'T care about fiddling with fancy "whetstones" and "diamond sharpeners" and such. Sharpen it, clean with soap and water, dry and burn it (to remove the rabies and typhus) and wipe it down with olive oil, mmmmm!
Elaborate? You heat your knives after every sharpening?
https://www.tsprof.eu wants a word
I haven't been there in (way) too long, but there used to be a great pierogi vendor -- so even on cold rainy mornings (too common) you'd at least get some warm delicious breakfast.
I tried a bunch of kitchen sheers. They lacked leverage. These cut bones with ease.
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