Anyone collect Randall catalogs?

[Melvin-Purvis]

I used to have a near complete collection, minty catalogs from the early 1950's to the (at the time, a few years ago) newest, including all inserts for the years that the inserts were updated but the catalogs weren't (a very common occurance)...now I'm down to just a few picked up since the collection was sold - this minty late 50's 12th printing, and a similar condition spread of Vietnam era catalogs.

How about yous guys?

 

[ron mathews]

Shel,

I use the catalogs (AKA "Randall Software") to help recreate the history. Early on, I bought the "Intersquare CD" containing most of the catalogs and a large portion of the old Randall newsletters. It's a small investment in return for a lot of information:

http://intersquare.com/knifeweb/desc.htm

However, over time I found out there were a few missing links: It went from this 1945 catalog to the 1948 catalog, a span of three years:

Two of the missing links were in the form of two different 1945 catalogs that came up on e-bay:

After sorting out the sequence, the blue catalog depicting a Model 3-6 emerged as the first 1945 catalog. There were two significant differences between the 1st and the 2nd & 3rd: Bo didn't initially offer a 5" version of his Model 4 (I mentioned this in another thread), and he offered both a 4" and 4 1/2" blade length for his Model 7:

In the 2nd and 3rd 1945 catalog, a 5" Model 4 is offered and a 4" Model 7 is not available! There is no other resource other than those two "missing" catalogs that provides this information. I ended up selling my catalogs to a guy who needed them for his collection, but they served my purpose.