Events Revisted

Knife Gun shows do bring out some interesting people.

I ran into a fellow who had a very interesting Bark River fixed blade knife.  It had a well-oiled wooden handle and a 12-14 inch blade.  The tip of the blade was pointless, similar to that of a butter knife.  He was selling but the $250 price was out of my range.  I thought of telling him I’d stand tall at $100, but decided not to.

Talking to other dealers I found out he had just bought the knife from them the week before.  It was obvious he was trying to flip the knife.  I hope he has fun, but I had the idea that the last person on that money pyramid would be stuck holding the knife for years before the price caught up.  And it wasn’t going to be me.  Still it only takes one customer who desperately needs that knife for his collection.

You can't always get what your want

I also ran into a fellow searching for a Kershaw Leek made with S30V steel.  The original ones were made that way, but now that they are available in Wal-Mart the best you might do is 420HC or 14C28V.  In truth 14C28N sounds like it could be a quality steel, if heat treated and tempered properly. 

The problem is, Wal-Mart has a well-deserved reputation for pushing manufacturers to use shortcuts and cheaper materials.  One only has to remember what happened to Rubbermaid.

I wouldn’t trust any knife I could buy at Wal-Mart for anything serious.  There are too many cheap counterfeits being brought into the country and who know where they end up.

Something New

I’ve been selling knives for years and I ran into something I haven’t ever seen.  Anywhere.

I take credit cards.  More and more people are using credit for everything from buying a cup of joe at McDonalds to a new car.  So a man walks up to the table and wants to know if I take “real” money.  I thought that was a satirical comment on credit and he was referring to greenbacks, bucks, dead presidents.

He wasn’t.  He wanted to trade one ounce silver bars for a knife.  I backed out of that as fast as possible.  Look, last Saturday an ounce of silver was selling for around $18.35.  Today it’s in the upper $17.  Who knows what it will be tomorrow.  I would have low balled him at say $15 an ounce and I’d still have his problem of selling the silver.  I can’t go to the bank and deposit silver.  I would have to sell it at the going rate or try to barter it away like he was trying to do.

Are they silver?  Are they actually 99.999% silver?  Dot they really weight what they're stamped?

It’s an impossible system.  Even when we were on the gold standard, a gold coin had a fixed value.  Besides, how did I know it was 99.999% sliver and an honest one ounce weight?

Maybe if society collapsed and we were all bartering .22 rim fires for bread, we’d all have scales and would barter in silver.

But you know what?  If it was the day after the apocalypse, I’d rather have steel knives than silver.