Why so many cut Nordost Odins?

I would be a bit cautious when buying reterminated cables, particularly Nordost cables (or cables with similar construction) because they are harder to reterminate. These cables have multiple conductors, each individually insulated and wrapped with silk fibers. I would guess that a solder pot to burn all of that off would be needed, and even then, how would one know that the person doing the job matched whatever process Nordost employs?

It's very good profit to fake $10k cables and sell it for $3k. Who cares they'll sound same!

They're not necessarily fakes. The cables are so ludicrously priced per inch (not only Nordost is guilty of this) that there's huge incentive to make the most of every inch. Say you could -- at extremely aggressive discount -- get a several meter run from a "friendly" dealer or a connection out the factory backdoor. Then, your best strategy for profit would be to break it up into multiple (short) normal-sized runs and sell individually at a price that represents a huge profit, yet still remains very attractively priced (to some) relative to the MSRP. This is a byproduct of the cables' retail value (and hence used value on audiogon, which is almost always proportional to MSRP) so vastly exceeding its intrinsic or wholesale value. There's certainly no need to go to all the trouble of counterfeiting in a market like this!

It's a good scam for those with the right/shady connections; it leverages all the marking work cable companies have paid for convincing us audiophiles that these cables somehow justify such high prices.

A less cynical analysis is that some of these chopped runs come from hobbyists (not profiteers) that got a great deal on a used long run for their system, and hocked the surplus length to recoup funds.

BTW I have nothing against profit; you'll be hard pressed to find someone more free-market than I, but the system works best when profit is more often the result of real innovation & hard work, and less often from the no-value-added (or negative net value added) cash grab middlemen.

In fact, what they're doing is segmenting the market. These cable companies still get to act like their flagship cables are magical, and keep the MSRP prices up where only the top 0.1% and Kanye West can afford them. Hence they command a HUGE profit margin on the top end of the market (and more importantly protect their brand), even though the volume is low.

These "chop and no box" models work below that, where there's more volume but audiophile are operating on a budget of some kind. This adds lots of cash-flow without destroying the huge profit margins up top. I'm not sure whether the cable companies are in on this or how much they are (certainly it probably varies among companies), but the financial incentive is there.

You just don't see these kind of dynamics in markets that are really healthy and productive to BOTH producer AND consumer.