A sort of perspective question

[Dijos]

In this forum, there is a lot of love for old knives, as the belief is that they were made better. There must have been some crap brands, right? We obvioulsy don't hear about them, as they are not worth mentioning, but they must have been around-this brings me to my second thought;
I've read here that many older knives were cherished, and expensive (relative to wages). Is that true? some folks must have owned knives that they had every intention of beating to death and throwing away, right? I know that for me, I could buy a pretty nice knife for a day's wage. A week's wage would go really far in knife land (but I would be summarily killed for spending mortgage payments on a knife). I know that Schrade (OT and Uncle henry) were very affordable, and worth every penny. There must have been low-cost, quality knives available at the time, I think. Any perspective on this? I'd love to see the list prices on knives through the decades ( and their corresponding wage data). Maybe case or case collectors have this kind of info somewhere.

 

[rev_jch]

Well imperial, utica, camillus of course, made cheap knives. The old shell bolster knives were fairly cheap, you have penny knives also. Knives cost as little as pennies at one time (.3-.20-.80.-1.00), but then the wages were pretty low too. Think of it this way. A winchester rifle in the late 1800's could cost you $12.00. That would be an entire months wages for some, or two months wages (or more) for others.

I use to have some old imperial celluloid knives that probably cost $1.50 new. When I bought them in the 80's they went for $6.00-10.00 apiece. These type of knives were not made very well, but they worked. Many were worn out. That's why you do not see many old ones around now.

 

[lambertiana]

From what I have seen of wage data and knife prices from 100 years ago, a typical pocketknife cost about 1-2 days worth of wages for a typical worker. Some brands were cheaper, some more expensive. I have a pretty good-sized collection of antique slipjoints, and I can tell you that some were very well made (definitely better than just about anything you see on the market today) and some were not so well made.

But the real answer to your question is that most people back then used their knives much more than the average person today does. I have seen many older knives with blades that have been ground down to almost nothing, a sure sign that they were well-used and valued; instead of just throwing them away they kept using them and using them. I have heard of surveys that were done that showed the average pocketknife half-life to be about 2-3 years. People just used them up. Huge numbers of knives were made. During poor economic times, like during the depression, the cheaper brands sold very well. For example, by 1940, Imperial was making up to 100,000 knives per day. Their cheap shell-handled knives enabled many poor people to buy a knife within their means. And you do still see quite a few of those Imperial shell-handled knives. Just look up Imperial on ebay. In fact, you can still buy them (new) today, think about how often you see the Camp King knives. They are cheap, not the greatest construction, but the ones that I have handled have at least had decent blade grinds.