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Stardate,....Blog 2454930.. I know..... I'm sure that dry line has been used before.

A note about Knife collecting

I think the natural progression of most collectors, no matter the item collected, is the desire to expand their collection and/or to learn more about the items they collect, discover their history. A person who collects knives will often start on thier journey unknowingly through some obscure event such as being given a knife that their great uncle carried in combat, maybe inheriting a small assortment of knives from a deceased loved one or perhaps finding a rusty old pocket knife buried on their property. These types of events can spur the person to seek out information about the knives and perhaps through these discoveries lead them down another path to other knives that intrigue them more.

In my case it was a collection inherited. I was given a group of mostly Commemorative pocket knives. A commemmorative knife is one who seeks to connect itself with a well known event or person. In the 1960's and 70's a good pocket knife was valued as a tool but hard core knife collecting was still relatively unknown. What the Commemorative movement sought to do was entice new collectors into the hobby by offering "Special" or "Limited Edition" knives in somewhat limited numbers to appeal to the "investment" conscious person who also enjoyed knives. What most collectors of that time did not know was the sheer number of Commemmorative offerings of every make and model that were to be produced by most every knife company trying to cash in on this new phononemon in the market. Companies like Boker, Parker and Frost dominated but others like CASE and Buck added thousands of shiny Special Edition investment grade blades to the already burgeoning supply. Every person, place or event was commemorated - whether they wanted to be or not. Villians and Heros alike - from Billly the Kid to Evil Knievel - from Lee & Grant to Tom T. Hall, every icon of history was now celebrated with a sharp edge and some colorful blade etching (if they were lucky the also got a Certificate of Authenticity).

So anyway, I received this collection and started to reasearch what they were and how much they might be worth today. I had visions of going to a Knife show and Dealers pushing each other out of the way to make offers to buy some of these 20 and 30 year old relics. However, I soon learned that most Commemoratives fell short of actually appreciating in value. Some actually declined in value from their original purchase price!

Was I discouraged, not really. It took several months of research to locate most of the knives in books and what was then the new internet superhighway - and I had enjoyed the journey.

Of course have heard that for every item there is a collector, since I had no interest in keeping these knives I made an effort to locate folks that still wanted to collect these mass produced blades of celebration - some collectors I met had memories of similiar knives in their fathers knife collection, others wanted to finally complete a series that they had been working on since their first relelase, some just collected anything with their Hero's name on it. In turn I discovered other knives that I did have an interest in so I sought the owners of those knives. Some trading took place, stories were exchanged and I met some nice folks along the way, all while travelling farther along the road to becoming a true collector myself.

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