It must be something in the aurora borealis.
My last “expensive” knife was an MSI, and it’s a great knife, but I recently started picking up Cold Steels, like a lot.
I’ve had a Code4 for years which ended up in my tool box, had an old Aus8 Recon1 years ago, and an American Lawman at some point. They were all good knives, but, like a lot of others here, I wanted USA and innovation, and of course there is always some amount of “keeping up with the Joneses” within the community, so that’s what I sought for a long time, and ended up moving those “lowly” Cold Steels along or relinquishing them to the toolbox/junk drawer abyss.
I’ve been into knives since I was a kid, and recall when CS was the 80’s and 90’s drool-driver for any mall commando, but they were too expensive for me back then. When I got into serious collecting some years ago, I saved for the more expensive things, and did a lot of selling/trading of several moderate pieces for singular, more expensive Benchmades, Hinderers, Protechs, ZT’s, or Microtechs. I got down to about ten that I really liked, thinking “That’s it, I have all I need.” We’ve all been there.
Well, I picked up an AD10 a while back, and although I was certainly one of the ones who initially poked fun of it being the end all-be-all knife, second only to the smatchet, I found I was actually carrying it pretty often, if not that, my least expensive, least fancy BM, a Presidio 2 CF Elite. I found that carrying a perfectly capable, yet less expensive knife was, well, perfectly fine. It led to a recent binge of several other CS folding models that I could find at very reasonable prices, especially for what they are capable of in terms of durability, value, and actual use. And they’re freakin affordable.
While I still prefer US made, and am a long time BM fan, they recently priced themselves out of my usual consideration for new offerings, and for a while they really weren’t coming out with anything super exciting to me (which seems to be changing lately), at least that I could justify cost vs. features. Instead, I have been finding plenty of very capable CS’s at way less than any of those that I have been enjoying quite a bit, even if I didn’t see the light for like 30 years.
So now I have my 10 or so “high dollar” knives (still probably less than many others out there in relative terms) which made the “don’t get rid of“ cut, and a pile of recently acquired Cold Steels.
To be clear, I still have more knives than any reasonable person really needs, but I think I’m in a good place. lol.
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