In the '80's and the '90's, if you wanted to get a hold of Frank ("Cuz") Buster ( he went by the name of "Cuz" and that is what folks called him), you had to call or go by the shop in Lebanon Tennessee around 11:00 PM or later. That's when you stood the best chance to catch him upstairs in his office drawing up new knife configurations. That is where and when he dreamed his pocket knives together. In the early 1980's and beyond, Fight'n Rooster, Colonel Coon and Cripple Creek knives where small knife producers and creators of knife clubs that spread across the country but where predominant in the Eastern and South Eastern United States. Their knives were, and still are, highly collectible and one of a kind knives. Fight'n Rooster having their knives produced in the renowned cutlery factory in Olbertz, Germany had the most knives to offer at a continuous pace at that time.( Cuz stuck his neck out in a business sense to produce these knives.) With Harris's Colonel Coon and Cargill's Cripple Creek being much smaller operations, Fight'n Rooster had an edge on the collector's market as far as availability was concerned and continued to pump out knives that were exciting and broke the mold of the traditional pocket knife. No one knife was ever produced to the saturation point and although knife clubs that used to congregate for bar-b-ques and get together's have dissipated in the last decade or two the Fight'n Rooster knife club still lives on as far as I know. You might want to check with Sterling Buster on that one. One thing is for certain, no matter what your opinion is of these knives, nobody and I do mean nobody has ever been able to even come close to the way the cutler's at Olbertz finished the pearl on a Fight'n Rooster pocket knife. During this period, early 1980's to mid 1990's, Fight'n Rooster, Colonel Coon and Cripple Creek where the hottest pocket knives to be collected and their legend still lives today.
Greg