Please check out this article from the American Knife and Tool Institute. It is a response to an article in The Wall Street Journal called “ “How New, Deadly Pocketknives Became a $1 Billion Business”. The inflammatory title gives you an idea about the “objectivity” of the author.
I am a junker. I love hitting thrift stores, pawn shops, swap meets and all the rest. In fact I go to our local Goodwill as part of my daily rounds.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that they were no longer putting out culinary knives. At the same time I also noticed that the usually ample supply of golf clubs had totally dried up.
The knife selection there was always fairly good and I have pulled out everything from antique Henckels, Cutco, Old Gerbers and even an old Remington skinner one time. I always look for good cheap golf clubs with graphite shafts as I use the shafts for a new sport that I am developing.
I asked one of the employees why the golf clubs were gone and he told me that the managers heard that they could be used as weapons and decided to stop offering them. It was not a big leap to guess that if they were scared off by golf clubs that they were really scared of knives.
So, I looked around and saw an arsenal on the shelves. Baseball bat clubs and garden tool spears and imagine what you could do with a tent pole!
The NRA guys are always throwing around the saying “Guns don’t kill people. people kill people.” They ignore the fact that guns just make it a whole lot easier to kill people. That’s the problem with these simplistic sayings; they always make good soundbites and bumper stickers, but don’t really stand up to scrutiny. To someone like me who advocates the responsible use of guns and gun ownership (as it is our right to do) I dislike this type of misleading message.
So, why do I seemingly veer off course? Because this saying has a valid kernel of truth. As with guns you could more accurately say “Golf clubs don’t kill people. People kill people. Golf clubs just make it easier to kill people. But so does a knife or a baseball bat or a pitchfork or a lamp or whatever anyone can pick up to amplify their strength when they are choosing to take the life of a fellow human!” Okay, it would be harder to fit this saying on a bumper sticker, but bumpers have never been an effective means of communicating the intricacies that separate truth from fiction.
I have written a lot about knives and encouraged people to refer to them as tools rather than defaulting to the term “weapon”. Considering the huge number of day to day practical tasks that a knife is used for there is no good reason for people to think “weapon” when they think “knife”.
A big part of the reason for this mindset is that “Man butters bread: film at 11:00″ is not nearly as sexy a title as “Man stabbed in kitchen: film at 11:00″. You just don’t hear about the hundreds of millions of practical knife uses that take place every day on the planet. We always have to keep in mind that the media is an amplifier for the negative and always skews the truth.
So, I was at Goodwill yesterday as usual on a Monday afternoon and found that there were fresh stores of culinary knives and golf clubs. I’d like to think that people came to their senses, but mysteriously there was not a baseball bat to be seen – anywhere!
Thanks for reading,
Chris Hyde
Like anything else it is a mixed bag. While it can be used by commercial entities strictly as a means of advertising, it can also be a way for entrepreneurs to share their ideas, educate others, answer questions, get to network with others and promote their companies.
I was talking with a friend who has done very well with social networking and has a small store that he and his wife run. We came to the conclusion that for small business owners who are doing what they love there is no way to separate themselves and their business. This has created a phenomenon in which the new means of social networking allows a synthesis between the individual and the business they own.
So, as I write about my personal experience buying, selling, researching and filming knives this dovetails with my business which is buying, selling, researching and filming knives. My business is a direct offshoot of my interests and my interests are embodied in my business.
This means that the content of my Twitter entries, Blog postings, Facebook entries, YouTube videos, Solingen Knife Forum contribution etc. cannot be primarily a means to drive traffic to my World Knives website. I need money to get by like anyone else, but selling knives is not the nexus of my interest in our oldest tool.
I am not alone in this. I meet other entrepreneurs all the time whose companies have risen from their passion and use these new ways to communicate to educate as well as promote.
In it’s best incarnation social networking can work as an open format for entrepreneurs to teach, learn, communicate and hopefully generate some interest in their companies.
All of you who are interestd in knife related subjects are encouraged to follow me on Twitter, “friend” me on Facebook, join our forum and e-mail me directly.
For my part I will make every effort to answer questions as quickly as possible and communicate in a direct and transparent way.
Let’s talk!
Chris Hyde
The Schrade knife co. started in 1904 as Schrade Cut. co.
It went out of business about 5 years ago.
Current “Schrade” knives are made in China.
Older USA Schrade knives are increasing in value.
With this in mind a lot of people are putting them on ebay and the market is saturated. If you are in a position to hang onto your old Shrade knives for a few years I would suggest that you do so as they will only increase in value as the supply starts to dry up.
QKF (Quick Knife Fact) – The first switch blade knife was developed in 1883 by George W. Korn. This is one year earlier than the first gravity knife!
[Goins Encyclopedia of Cutlery Marking]
QKF (Quick Knife Fact) – Celluloid was first used for the handles of pocket knives in 1870.
This past weekend I attended the Oregon Knife Collectors Assoc. knife collectors show in Eugene, Or. It was a frenetic class room for those interested in how to value their knives.
There is a lot of wisdom at that show. There are people with expertise in just about every imaginable esoteric type type of knife and it’s history. So, it was a great opportunity for me to tap the experience of those who know more than I do about certain types of knives. In fact, a big part of this show is sharing what you know with others and learning from those who know more than you do.You can watch people running around with “mystery knives” from table to table trying to figure out what it is and what it’s worth.
So, I have a knife I got from a collection I bought. The collector kept copious notes and would add to them over the years as he got more information. This particular knife had a page of information telling who he bought it from and when it was made and who owned it. The thing is he was dead wrong on all counts except who he had bought it from (which was also a clue).
This knife has a cast handle with US Navy mark, American eagle and medical caduceus symbol in high relief. The notes told a story of a medical officer on a particular civil war ship and went into great detail about how it got to the person who sold it to the collector I bought it from. Of course you want to believe this type of story as it adds”soul” to knife and also hopefully some monetary value. But, it is important to make the point that pencil scratchings on a piece of paper are not provenance.
After walking the knife around to three experienced military knife guys all of whom are published I found that the knife could never have been from the civil war era. Rather than pewter the handle was cast aluminum and had other indications of being a WWII knife. One of the guys also recognized the name of the seller and shared the fact that he had a reputation for misrepresenting items as civil war relics for his own benefit.
I didn’t pay a crazy amount of money for this knife as I could not verify at the time of purchase that it was what the notes indicated it was. In fact, the value of WWII knives of this type has really gone up and chances are I can make money on it when all is said and done. The point is that as an obscure item it was not something I could “Google” or look up on ebay.
Leaning on trusted experts with experience buying, selling and researching specific types of knives is the primary component of determining fair market value. Along with price guides, internet research and auction results sage advice from those “in the know” will give the best idea of your knifes value.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Hyde
There is no one source to determine what your knife is worth. As a knife dealer and collector It is part of my job to determine the value of knives and from my experience value can only be determined within a range and based on many variables.
I’ve been buying, selling and collecting knives for quite a while and there are some knives that I can look at and say “I have bought and sold this model of knife, same age, same condition 5 times and got between $200-$300″. That gives me a pretty good “real world” idea that under most circumstances I will get something within that range.
There are many more knives that I have had little or no personal experience selling that I need to research. In doing this I have found that there is no fail safe method to determining a knifes exact value.
Price guides are the most common way to get a basic idea of value and many of them are good. I use them on a regular basis. But there are some problems with price guides that can make them less than accurate.
First, a PG should be based on auction results and their own personal history of sales, and authored a person or persons who are objective.
The PG should also be up to date. A price guide that is 20 years old does not tell you about current trends in collecting that are based on auction results and cannot tell you how much a given knife has improved (or declined) in value.
Second, a knife is worth what someone is willing to pay for it – period. PGs are just that - “guides” and can never ultimately determine what someone will pay for a knife. I can’t tell you how many times I have been to knife shows and seen a yellowed tag that has been on a knife for 10 years with a price in line with a price guide.
The approach that I have come up with is to use a combination of resources to get a good idea of what a given knife is worth. Here are the resources that I use:
Price Guides, Ebay closed auction results, other on-line auction results from auction houses, personal experience with previous sales and most importantly associates with experience in specific types of knives.
There is always someone out there who knows more about a specific knife than I do and making friends with other collectors and dealers with expertise is the single most important resources in determining a knifes value.
There are some really good forums out there as well that are full of individuals who love knives and have accumulated a life time of experience with them.
Next time I will go more into depth on my personal approach.
Thanks for the read!
Chris Hyde
I get a lot of questions about knife sharpeners. The basic question is “What is the best knife sharpener?”. Although there is no one product that I would say is the best, of the ones I have used there are a few I would recommend.
It is important to keep in mind that it is not necessarily just the sharpener that makes the difference; it is as much the habit of keeping your knife sharp on an ongoing basis. That’s why I recommend using a simple sharpener every time you use your knife. Depending the model you’ll only need to give your knife a couple of swipes.
This works to insure that you always have a sharp knife and a knife that will rarely need to have a more “profound” sharpening.
What I use for my every use sharpener is called a Warthog V-sharp. It’s easy to use, takes up little space and the spring trension design is easy on your blades. I don’t have any affiliation with this company, but I got one 10 years ago or so and really like it.
I wanted to mention that there was an article in The Washington Post that I was a part of that goes further into depth on this. You can see it here:
Washington Post Knife Sharpening Article
For those of you who don’t keep up with the “eternal edge” idea, your knives are going to get to a point where you will have to pull out the bigger guns.
There are a lot of good electric sharpeners out there and I have not used them all. Of the ones that I have used I like Chef’s Choice 130. It is worth reading the instructions for the best results. For the purposes of full disclosure I mention that I do sell this on my website. But I sell it because I bought one and really liked it.
Thanks for reading,
Chris Hyde
You can see all my videos in one place now on You Tube. Check them out when you get a chance!
