Are high end predators hard to sell on the secondary market?

skogstokig said:
no idea. when their top model was like model 3k6 and costed around $800, yea i saw people here play with them. now they ask the equivalent of that, times two, for painted cues with big ugly cats on them.

and their freak colored break cues sells out because people are mental.
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Only Pred stuff i might look at is shafts and even then imo they are way overpriced. The OP's cue is a nice piece, their collab's with US custom makers was/is a good idea. Still crazy priced tho.
 
garczar said:
Profit on their Chinese stuff has to be massive. The workers are probably making 1/5(maybe) of what pay is in US. I've never owned a single Pred product. Their cues have never done anything for me. They are marketing guru's, their diehard fans won't buy anything else.
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I know it's crazy.
Picked this custom up about 8 months ago to my personal specificatins from inlays, colors, etc. and it cost much less than some of Preditor's high end machine made products. I just don't understand it.
 

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I've got a couple 314's that I use on other brand butts. I'd like to try a Revo, once I find one for a decent price that will fit one of my butts. That's about the only thing Predator I'm interested in.
 
I got into the Predator ecosystem for a song but would still buy a radial P3 (or at the very least a Revo shaft) if I had the pocket change, given my time with a P3 & the 11.8 Revo it came with (retail at the time it hit the market was $1,200-1,300 so not the same money as $1,500+.) I did like the looks of one or two IKON models, but they only came in uni-loc so they can go pound cat litter.
 
skor said:
Every time Predator puts out a limited edition cues, the dealer and flippers are grabbing them fast so they'll be out of stock fast which raises the prices on the secondary market.
But they got to be too expansive. At the end of it, a buyer must feel he gets a good value for his money.
Predator is a big brand but it's not an 8K cue brand.
Personally, beside scattered models over the years, I never liked anything past the Falcon days. After my first Predator cue (98-1), I just stayed with their shafts and matched them to better, nicer butts.
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Cracks me up people will pay twice as much for a bk rush because it’s purple or whatever lol
 
trob said:
Cracks me up people will pay twice as much for a bk rush because it’s purple or whatever lol
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People will pay more for a different colored car and other products.
They will also pay more for a limited and special editions products although it's the same product with the same specs.
This is not just a Predator thing. Predator just realize it and know how to use it to make money.
I don't see any issues with that.
The secondary market prices are sometimes ridiculous, but this as well not just a Predator thing, there are a lot of custom cue makers these days that won't deal or sell cues directly to customers and you have to go through a dealer/flipper that adds their gain to the prices.

People collect for different reasons.
There are collections that are made from real valuable pieces and there are collections that are not. I'll give you an example from a different domain - Cameras collecting. There are cameras out there that are worth thousands of dollars that some people hunt in auctions and collect them, and there are collections of cheap cameras, like from a specific brand, like Russian cameras or collections of cheap point and shoots.

Same goes to cues, there are people who collect the top cue makers, the legendary and big cues.
Other collect a certain brand, like McDermott or Joss or in the case Predator cues.
A lot of cue companies release special edition cues that are being collected, Predator is not unique, just maybe more successful...

I have a small collection of cues, to be honest I didn't pay much for it, back when I was more into collecting, the most I paid was about $1600 for a Tim Scruggs cue. a few of my cues were won on raffles we had here, some I bought second hand, some were new but except for the TS and a McDaniel ($1500) all were under a $1000 (early 2000s values).
It's not like I didn't want a $5000 Szam or a $10000 Bushka, I was just never at a place I can afford such a thing.
Fast forward 20 years and today I'm in a mindset that I will never spend over a $1000 (today's value) on a cue and I find collecting cues a bit stupid if like me, you actually play with them as they are just a piece of wood that doesn't hold well over time.
 
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Appears the cue market has changed, young new players want a cue that plays well, not looks pretty, hence high end cues are hard to sell.
 
For me, when a Predator gets to be over $1200 or so, I'd rather buy a full custom. That said, higher end Predators sell pretty well in Texas from what I've seen.

The caveat to that would be one of the special edition or curly maple P2s or one of the exotic P3s. I would probably pay a bit more than $1200 for one of those.
 
philly said:
I know it's crazy.
Picked this custom up about 8 months ago to my personal specificatins from inlays, colors, etc. and it cost much less than some of Preditor's high end machine made products. I just don't understand it.
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Very nice cue!

And yeah, for the price of one high end predator, I could get something like a really nice custom Pechauer and several hours of lessons with a pro pool player.
 
skor said:
People will pay more for a different colored car and other products.
They will also pay more for a limited and special editions products although it's the same product with the same specs.
This is not just a Predator thing. Predator just realize it and know how to use it to make money.
I don't see any issues with that.
The secondary market prices are sometimes ridiculous, but this as well not just a Predator thing, there are a lot of custom cue makers these days that won't deal or sell cues directly to customers and you have to go through a dealer/flipper that adds their gain to the prices.

People collect for different reasons.
There are collections that are made from real valuable pieces and there are collections that are not. I'll give you an example from a different domain - Cameras collecting. There are cameras out there that are worth thousands of dollars that some people hunt in auctions and collect them, and there are collections of cheap cameras, like from a specific brand, like Russian cameras or collections of cheap point and shoots.

Same goes to cues, there are people who collect the top cue makers, the legendary and big cues.
Other collect a certain brand, like McDermott or Joss or in the case Predator cues.
A lot of cue companies release special edition cues that are being collected, Predator is not unique, just maybe more successful...

I have a small collection of cues, to be honest I didn't pay much for it, back when I was more into collecting, the most I paid was about $1600 for a Tim Scruggs cue. a few of my cues were won on raffles we had here, some I bought second hand, some were new but except for the TS and a McDaniel ($1500) all were under a $1000 (early 2000s values).
It's not like I didn't want a $5000 Szam or a $10000 Bushka, I was just never at a place I can afford such a thing.
Fast forward 20 years and today I'm in a mindset that I will never spend over a $1000 (today's value) on a cue and I find collecting cues a bit stupid if like me, you actually play with them as they are just a piece of wood that doesn't hold well over time.
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You'll never hear me say a bad thing about predator. I do poke occasionally at their fans, but all in good fun. You can't fault predator for being brilliant at marketing and as long as they continue to support pool as they have been, more power to them!!
Someone said predator is a marketing magnate repping pool products. 👍🏻
 
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