Are expensive knives worth it?

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We're collectors here. And collectors value differently. A $10 original cost knife may be worth 100 times after only a few years not because of anything other than rarity. Other bases include things like beauty, durability, quality, etc. And you can apply the same principal (and even a threshold for folly) for all durable items. So a collector of a $2,000 pocket knife for whatever reason will think his buy is a sound one; thinking it's $23,000 cheaper than a Harley CVO, and $49,998,000 cheaper than a creepy Damien Hirst artwork.

But we're a minority, make no mistake. Perhaps 90% of people will think that a knife worth more than $10 is an expensive folly.
 
The True North said:
I would argue that the technology and engineering involved is precisely why expensive knives are worth it. There is a ton of engineering and tech that goes into stuff like Busse and CPK for example.
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I realize the plastic technology and metalurgy has advanced. Possibly creating a knife that stays sharp, resistent to rust, and sharpens easy. Maybe a unicorn, maybe real.

But I find it hard to compare to optics. or moving parts of firearms, that also include advancements to plastic and metals.

But again, I don't see a lot of discussion as to why they are better. I don't dispute they are. I understand money has a value. Just curious why people pay more.
 
I don’t know yet. The jury is still out for me. For years, my motto has been:
“Mora and Opinel. All else is vanity.”
Well, Mora and Opinel, and Victorinox, and Old Hickory, and Green River. On occasion, I have stepped out of character and bought something more expensive, particularly when I saw a good value, but just as often if something struck my fancy and I happened to have the money.

A few times during the last year I stepped way up to buy something far above my usual ceiling, a couple of SYKCO knives, and most recently, a CPK. What drew me in each case was the handle. For a couple of months, I was completely enchanted by the reseprine handles on the SYKCOs. I love the feel of the stuff, and the grip. The handles are not perfect. On a couple of them I had to reshape the flared butt end to soften a corner that wanted to dig into my hand.

With the Carothers, I had read a lot about the quality and performance of the knives, and also about the design of the handles on the DEK. As it happened, I had an unexpected small windfall that I had not yet spent when I got a free Friday afternoon. I logged on to the sale, claimed a knife, and paid up. In due course it arrived on my doorstep.

The handle turns out to be better than I had imagined. Its shape has a lot in common with the Mora Companion, a knife I have always enjoyed using. I have not had the chance to take it out and use it, but I have not suffered even the slightest twinge of buyer’s remorse, which I take to be a good sign.
 
For mass production company, it's easy to optimize and cut cost due to their scale of operation. Let's take Honda and Aston Martin for example:

Honda can make one engine and use that for all of their models for many years. The features and body paint is the same, so the manufacturing is much easier. The parts are interchangable. They can outsource for cheap labor. Their providers also have their own means of optimizing cost.

AM on the other hand have models that are marketed as "only 10 ever made", why? because rich people. So their parts are not interchangable (some parts. not all). They constantly have to make custom parts and features and body paint to accomodate individual customers. The numbers of skilled labors that gets to touch an AM is limited to those that have been trained by AM for many years. And their providers also have to meet a very high standard of quality, so cost is further added.

The same for knife company:

Spyderco, BM, ZT,... can buy steels, G10, FRN, screws, materials,... in large quantity and cost per unit goes down dramatically. They have their manufacturing optimized, industrious and highly efficient.

Custom knife makers buy their materials in smaller quantities (don't quote me on this). Their production is much more hand labor intensive. They customize their product according to the customer of just for their liking.

Of course, this is only taking into account the cost of production, not the name of the brand.
 
I get as much pleasure from a Victorinox SAK as a Chris Reeves Sebenza , for different reasons.
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Depends if you're gonna use an expensive one or not. Lots of people get them and just take pics lol I've used a few 8-900$ knives and they are real nice for sure. A 100$ nice can be real good as well
 
The answer is "yes", expensive knives are worth it; doesnt matter who you are.

Why? Everybody's definition of "expensive" is different. I think a 200+ knife is "expensive" but worth it.

Joe over here thinks a 50$ knife is expensive but worth it.

Peter over here thinks 20$ knife is expensive but worth it.

But everyone has an "expensive but worth it" threshold, hence, everyone thinks expensive knives are worth it.

I think the discussion veered a little to comfortable "buy-to-use" price vs "buy-to-bling" price. My personal "buy-to-use" price is around 200 and under (there are some exceptions like the Province and a few balisongs) and "buy-to-bling" price of around 500 and under. Anything over 500 I have to have a really good reason to buy and I usually talk myself out of it. I dont want to be those "only out the box for pictures" guys if I can help it.
 
Dergyll said:
Joe over here thinks a 50$ knife is expensive but worth it.

Peter over here thinks 20$ knife is expensive but worth it.
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The difference of 30 dollars made me laugh a little bit- somehow you didn’t exaggerate the price differences enough. I think good ol’ Joe and Pete could reconcile their differences over 30 bucks; especially if they are BF members.

I think we should consider expensive to be greater than or equal to the cost of an average new Stihl chain saw. You want cutting performance? There’s you’re cutting performance. It’ll make a mess of your charcuterie board, but tree removal is a breeze.
 
Stahlmann said:
Not so. One thing is for certain. The old adage "you get what you pay for" doesn't hold anymore, if it every really did. More expensive, doesn't necessarily equate to higher product quality. Particularly when it comes to cutlery it seems.

I suspect you could run both knives through a series of cutting performance, durability and maintainability tests -- in other words, product quality tests, and the differences between the two would be negligible.

THEN you consider the "pride of ownership" factor. For many it means little. Their focus is on product quality at the best price. For others, it really means something. It's tangible and that's fine. Difficulties only arise when they try to justify their pride of ownership in terms of product quality, rather than the extra utilities they receive from owning a certain brand name, something with a certain look, something with a certain bling or something that is known to be expensive.
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Honestly, after using both for a while, difference might not be very drastic, but it's definitely not negligilible.

Most important difference is Viper being way more comfortable during use, and much better handle allows me to use more force while cutting.

Then geometry - Viper is a better slicer.

Materials - Viper stays sharp longer and is easier to keep sharp, while not rusting even in sweat.
 
One comment I found interesting, was someont said fixed blades it is. I might have thought the opposite. I don't have an auto, I wouldn't mind one. But I want reliability. Moving parts might be worth spending money on. In general I would think folders with moving parts would be worth spending more money on, then a hunk of metall sandwiched between to pieces of plastic. Never had one of those break or get funny.

I have never had any expensive metal, maybe the durability of the edge or such would change me mind. I am thinking about a bark river, just cause UP, and I suspect that may be cheap to some people. Not alot of money to me, but expensive for a knife.

A good leather sheath really makes a knife, and I havn't noticed a lot of discussion there. The sheath falling apart, has really turned me off from KOA.
 
sharp_edge said:
Something being expensive is always a subjective opinion and so is the answer to the question of the OP. A ZT0562cf might be expensive for Person A But inexpensive for Person B, or expensive in 2015 But inexpensive in 2020 for the same person. Also, the answer depends on what factors of knives a person consider when buying: performance, aesthetics, materials, quality and f&f, reputation of the maker, country of origin, etc: just some of them or all of them?
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Not really, nope. There's an entire field of study that deals with this. It's called "economics." 😉
 
Quiet said:
This is always the argument of the broke or miserly person, and frankly we’ve seen it all before.
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I'm kinda broke too, but around 150€ for M390 steel, ergonomic handle, solid design and craftsmanship seemed like a good deal.

So instead of buying bunch of cheaper knives in hope of finding something similar, I saved for a "real deal" and after 6 months I'm still happy with it, and it's in my pocket even now as I'm writing this :)

So, if you ask me - to me, personally, it's worth it.

But it also depends from person to person. Like, for me 250€ was and still is max I'd ever spend on a knife. Most expensive knife I ever bought being Warcraft Tanto (and I'm thrilled with it too).

And some members here see that as cheap though. It depends on people's budget too I'd say.
 
Zerk said:
One comment I found interesting, was someont said fixed blades it is. I might have thought the opposite. I don't have an auto, I wouldn't mind one. But I want reliability. Moving parts might be worth spending money on. In general I would think folders with moving parts would be worth spending more money on, then a hunk of metall sandwiched between to pieces of plastic. Never had one of those break or get funny.

I have never had any expensive metal, maybe the durability of the edge or such would change me mind. I am thinking about a bark river, just cause UP, and I suspect that may be cheap to some people. Not alot of money to me, but expensive for a knife.

A good leather sheath really makes a knife, and I havn't noticed a lot of discussion there. The sheath falling apart, has really turned me off from KOA.
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Bark rivers are crazy expensive in my opinion.

But really good edge retention at crazy toughness like with 3V is trully amazing, especially considering it's also almost stainless.

And crazy edge retention at decent toughness like M390 make for a good compact fixed blade.
 
EatingSarma said:
I'm kinda broke too, but around 150€ for M390 steel, ergonomic handle, solid design and craftsmanship seemed like a good deal.

So instead of buying bunch of cheaper knives in hope of finding something similar, I saved for a "real deal" and after 6 months I'm still happy with it, and it's in my pocket even now as I'm writing this :)

So, if you ask me - to me, personally, it's worth it.

But it also depends from person to person. Like, for me 250€ was and still is max I'd ever spend on a knife. Most expensive knife I ever bought being Warcraft Tanto (and I'm thrilled with it too).

And some members here see that as cheap though. It depends on people's budget too I'd say.
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I think you're doing it right. Good materials are always going to be a good reason to spend a little more.

I should say that I don't think inexpensive knives are bad. After all, you can get plenty of knives for under a hundred bucks that I myself would carry, no problem. They won't be pretty, and will be pretty utilitarian, but they work. I have hundreds of knives, and you can definitely look at that collection as a whole and see where more money started to make sense (for me, personally). But there are guys here with a giant collection of say (since you mentioned it) Cold Steels, many of which were probably purchased under the $100 mark that will be bulletproof essentially forever, and CS has always known how to heat-treat and sharpen a knife! And as another example: though they aren't for me personally, I understand companies like Civivi are doing what appear to be great things at really affordable prices.
 
hank_rearden said:
We're collectors here. And collectors value differently. A $10 original cost knife may be worth 100 times after only a few years not because of anything other than rarity. Other bases include things like beauty, durability, quality, etc. And you can apply the same principal (and even a threshold for folly) for all durable items. So a collector of a $2,000 pocket knife for whatever reason will think his buy is a sound one; thinking it's $23,000 cheaper than a Harley CVO, and $49,998,000 cheaper than a creepy Damien Hirst artwork.

But we're a minority, make no mistake. Perhaps 90% of people will think that a knife worth more than $10 is an expensive folly.
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Indeed. The brotherhood of gun guys, knife guys, car guys, watch guys, and gamer guys all have one thing in common:

Interesting financial decisions.
 
EatingSarma said:
Months ago, I made decision to get myself Viper Berus 1 and use it as EDC.

Before that I carried Boker GoBag.

That are 2 different steels (D2 and M390) at 2 different prices (30€ and 150€). So you can get 5 Bokers for 1 Viper, so is it worth it???

In my experience - yes.
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I personally have to agree with you. Now, there are some good, even very good knives available these days in the $50-100 range. My experience is that many knives in the $150-250 range are noticeably better, however. Better design, better construction, and/or better function. I think when prices start to go past that range, you reach a point of diminishing returns, and you are often paying the extra money for subjective intangibles (famous designers, exotic materials, etc.). This is why I do most of my shopping in that "sweet spot" price range. I'd rather buy one exceptional knife, rather than several that are just good. YMMV.
 
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