About the Show

The last Medina gun show was a little trippy.

Right off the bat two guys comes up to my table and point at the Benchmade knives and asked “Are they real?”

Wow, what an existentialist question!  Plato thought that everything was an imperfect copy of an ideal object.   Somewhere there is the perfect knife which displays all the attributes, all the knifieness that a knife should have and in perfect portions.

Astrophysicists suggests that all matter is a hologram of an information trapped in the event horizon of a massive black hole.

I really didn’t know how to answer them until I realized they were asking if my knives were counterfeit.  It was a little insulting and I should have told them to fuck off.  I usually only come to that conclusion sometime later, so I told them what I know and suggest that if they buy a $200 knife for $50, something isn’t on the level.

One of them asked if his Spyderco Civilian was a knock-off.  Frankly, in many cases, it’s almost impossible to tell without doing both destructive and non-destructive testing.  They bought it for 50 bucks off a guy who thought it was a counterfeit.  I think they got what they paid for.

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After a few sales I realized the main advantages of not buying from the internet.

One: you can pick it up, hold it and compare it to similar object and decide which is the best for you.

Two: you get it right now.

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In the gun side, I was surprised to see a lever action cowboy rifle with a bullseye type peep sight fixed to the top of the receiver.  In retrospection I don’t see why not.  Most guns are more accurate than we are, I just don’t think of a lever action as a 500 yard gun.

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I was filling in for my friend John, who needed to make a pit stop.  John sells ammo among other things.  So I was surprised when someone asked if the one ounce novelty pennies were gold.

 

“No sir, just copper.”   I said.  Especially since they are on sale for 5 bucks.

I get similar questions about a line of Marttiini fixed blades I carry.  People what to know if they are made from the laminated steel they have read about.  Again a simple examination of the prices revels they don’t sell for the $500 plus that Fallkniven asks for their laminated steel.

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We had a little bad news on Sunday morning.  We arrived just ahead of the opening bell and found out our neighbors had an S&W watch stolen.  They covered their table and were one of the last to leave.  Only a few other vendors and security was left behind.  It means someone:

       Knew it was there,

       Waited until the place was empty,

       Walked around to the back of the table,

       Lifted the cover cloth and stole it.

You expect a small amount of theft from the general public but not from the other vendors.  (We had a inexpensive CRKT knife lifted from the table during a show.) It wasn’t an expensive watch, but now I have to wonder if someone will do that to me?