Guys,
I have been asked on this thread to make a comment about prices and what my experience suggests should be the "going" rate. Sorry to avoid the question but I'm going to avoid the question. The reason I'm not going to give a straight answer is that there are many factors that govern how you will achieve a price. Please note I did not say the "right" price, for there is no right price for this or anything else. If you were to strip away the name of a Mont Blanc, take it out of the fancy box, replace it with a generic but equally performing refill and try and charge the amount that it should fetch on the open market (being a Mont Blanc) (please note, I didn't say "what it is worth") you wouldn't have a hope.
If you were to have a display of six pens, two each of three different makes each with a little label around it minutely inscribed with the price, do you think you would achieve the same price if that pen were to be sold from a display of a single type of pen of which there were about fifteen or twenty different woods or materials. Lets be honest the first is akin to a car boot sale, and what do you pay for stuff at a car boot sale? Furthermore, what do you normally buy at a car boot sale? Crap.
Was at a craft fair last year and whilst we were setting up a bloke approached me, fuming, asking what the b****y h**l was I doing there. Turns out he was a pen turner, he thought he had booked the show as the sole pen turner. Shrugged my shoulders and told him that if his stuff was any good he do well and I wouldn't. Truth is, to a pen turner, his stuff was better than mine. His wife told me over the weekend that he only bought very individual blanks from a source in Italy or Taiwan or somewhere. He made about three pens a day, the care, apparently, that he took was fantastic. Well whoppee, it didn't do him much good, he had about thirty pens, all fountains in horrible mass produced fake rosewood boxes. He sold six pens all weekend, I cleared over 75 and I didn't make and sell any slimlines.
First mistake he made is that he didn't have the ability to sell horizontally - You don't use a fountain pen sir? then why not try this rollerball. Why do you prefer a rollerball, is it because ballpoints are normally a bic engraving experience (answer always yes), I would value your opinion then Sir on this Sierra Ball point pen. Which do you prefer Sir, the Rollerball or the Ball point - (How to close a sale with the option!!)
All my pens come in a branded cheap cardboard presentation box which will normally go in the bin, I'd already got them printed when Gary Rance told me a story to confirm what I had done - he said put a Pen (in my case) Pendant (in his) in a box and a pendant has become a gift. The rosewood boxes and the terrible offering of pouches, boxes and other recepticles for pens do not make them look like gifts, they are merely packaged in a characterless bit of tat. There's a difference between a gift box and a keepsake box, stuff in a keepsake box doesn't look like a gift, and people buy gifts.
I mentioned the stories about the wood, this weekend gone I sold an Executive ball point to an engineer in the Royal Navy, guess the wood? Lignum Vitae. The wood used to be used to make thrust bearings on ships because it was so hardwearing and self lubricating. I'll hopefully relate a story about Longbows and Yew trees, but I'm trying to broker a deal over quite a few trees so I'll keep that one close to my chest until its done, if it ever happens, but the value of the pen to these clients has become more than what it is worth, if you can ever define what worth is in this context.
I've just had a new acrylic pen stand manufactured which can be mounted into two bookends to form a display rack from which I will sell slimline stylus pens with special pen clips on, I'll have it completed tomorrow and hopefully it willl further illustrate my point. I'll posta photo of it.
So, to evade the question, I hope you understand why. You're not going to get £50 for a sierra, but you'll waste your time selling it for £12, and what you can get for it in between that is down to your confidence, your knowledge, your presentation, and your packaging and awareness of basic selling skills - apply the so what principle, if you can say "so what" to any statement you make about a pen in the sales process, you're about to fail, the more times you say "which means that" the more times you'll suceed. Sorry if this turned out to be a sles lecture, it wasn't meant to sound like that, but it does frustrate me that we all make excellent products that way exceed the quality of Parker and Mont Blanc and we are prepared to settle for little reward, even if you are not selling it as a business. If you don't want the extra cash, please advertise your pens at the cost you are prepared to sell them at as a hobby and put a price tag next to it which has inflated the cost by at least a fiver and put a £X on each purchase will be donated to Cancer Research. That way you will find that people are prepared to pay more because it is worth it to them, and you will find you're making some cracking stuff.
Going to bed now. Didn't mean to offend, but if I did tough, it's what I believe in.
) to the price, so I sell a slimline for 15 dollars (or 10.00 Pounds). I know that is a little low, but as Mattyts said above, "It's a hobby not a business." I would add however, like most things, they are worth what you can get for them.
