RogueFactor
03-02-2009, 04:13 PM
Some years ago now, I offered the DeadlyWind Karta. At the time, what made this Karta different than all others was that the rails I provided DeadlyWind were AGD Slugs. This meant there werent any holes in the rail...a first back then for the Karta. All previous Kartas were either cut from AGD E-Mag rails or RT Pro rails, all of which had holes in the sides of the rail. Since then, DeadlyWind purchased Slug rails from me, so the hole-less rail isnt as uncommon as only 10 in existance.
I wanted these Kartas to be special, so I modified them to accept the RPG Sub-Zero and included a pair of RPG ReTents with them. And they came with the all-famous glossy black Rogue ano. I also had 1 each made in Red & Blue.
They had to be modified, because the Sub-Zero sits as absolutely low as it can. The contour around the feedneck breech only allows a Sub-Zero to thread 1 or 2 threads in unmodified.
They were originally offered at a price of $325 with all the fixins, a phenominal price! You would have thought theyd fly off the shelves, right? This couldnt be further from reality. It took well over a year to sell 8 of them. The original price was based on them selling quickly, so the last of them were sold at $375. And believe it or not, the last 2 of the 10 were sold back to DeadlyWind who had interested buyers.
Most of the e-mails I fielded were trying to figure out how to purchase them cheaper. Either by removing and deducting the feedneck/detents(which I was including at no charge) from the price or by building a Karta based marker with the hopes they would be within $100 or so of my value-priced RPG markers.
When the last of these sold, like clockwork...there was a demand for them. This is typical of AO, when something is no longer available is when everyone wants one. Needless to say, it wasnt long before the few that were on the market were snapped up and re-sold as 'rare', with a pricetag in the $500+ range for used Kartas.
This was a valuable lesson. First, selling these things at give-away prices meant that Id spend more time answering e-mails for those that wanted them cheaper. Second, by not making the lions share of the profit on them just gave that opportunity to those waiting in the wings for them to become scarce and sell them as 'rare'. Neither of which since then I have ever let happen again, on this product or any others...:wthumpup:
And or the pic:
I wanted these Kartas to be special, so I modified them to accept the RPG Sub-Zero and included a pair of RPG ReTents with them. And they came with the all-famous glossy black Rogue ano. I also had 1 each made in Red & Blue.
They had to be modified, because the Sub-Zero sits as absolutely low as it can. The contour around the feedneck breech only allows a Sub-Zero to thread 1 or 2 threads in unmodified.
They were originally offered at a price of $325 with all the fixins, a phenominal price! You would have thought theyd fly off the shelves, right? This couldnt be further from reality. It took well over a year to sell 8 of them. The original price was based on them selling quickly, so the last of them were sold at $375. And believe it or not, the last 2 of the 10 were sold back to DeadlyWind who had interested buyers.
Most of the e-mails I fielded were trying to figure out how to purchase them cheaper. Either by removing and deducting the feedneck/detents(which I was including at no charge) from the price or by building a Karta based marker with the hopes they would be within $100 or so of my value-priced RPG markers.
When the last of these sold, like clockwork...there was a demand for them. This is typical of AO, when something is no longer available is when everyone wants one. Needless to say, it wasnt long before the few that were on the market were snapped up and re-sold as 'rare', with a pricetag in the $500+ range for used Kartas.
This was a valuable lesson. First, selling these things at give-away prices meant that Id spend more time answering e-mails for those that wanted them cheaper. Second, by not making the lions share of the profit on them just gave that opportunity to those waiting in the wings for them to become scarce and sell them as 'rare'. Neither of which since then I have ever let happen again, on this product or any others...:wthumpup:
And or the pic: