I'd venture to say that most of us here have the dreaded 'overlap' in most of our collections. Or is is really dreaded? The fact that we have the cash needed (and the time) to prosecute our knife addictions probably relegates our status somewhere outside the plus or minus standard four deviations. We are most certainly NOT normal.
The phases that we go through, the journey of the 'search', the meeting of the characters along the way, the standing in lines at various gun shows, the embellished hunting stories all point to the fact that we as collectors are easily bored, swayed by trends and hopelessly locked into trying to answer vexing questions while knowing all along that we actually enjoy the hunt. We are the primal hunters and will continue in this bizarre fashion until they put us into a box, paint our faces and prop us up with a black Chinese fashioned suit minus the pockets. The notion that one knife is going to do it all for us is about as silly as trying to read Atlas Shrugged in one sitting.
Our moods and interests also change with experience, age, marital status, educational level and geographical location. Then there is chance, which happens to us all. The roads of collecting are limitless. We delve into Puma, Schrade, Buck, Gerber, Kabar, Cold Steel, Browning, Eye Brand, Case, Mission, Spyderco, Boker, Swiss Army, Queen and countless others while lusting after custom pieces that many of us will never hold or use. Imagine your chagrin when you finally secure your Randall following a bitter protracted waiting period only to find that it cuts no better than the $15 Mora Robust that recently caught your eye!
There is such delight (and madness) in variety, and while I still take my Basic 9 into the field with me, I readily admit that there are boxes full of other choices that would, and could perfrom just as well. In a different place and a different time people got along just fine sans all these myriad choices.
