Bg-42

With absolute certainty, you might not. More generally, you would know by the steel's characteristics and whatever indications you might have about production date of the blade.

I can definitely discern differences between my BG and S30V Sebenza blades, but not I'm not so sure I could sort out 100 Sebenzas into groups of BG and S30V with nothing to go on but visual inspection.

The steels do sharpen differently, so if you had at least one known blade of each flavor and were trying to type a third, which was a user, I think that would not be unreasonably difficult.
 
I have a Small LH Regular Sebenza in BG42 and a Small RH Regular Sebenza in s30v.

Here are the visual differences I can see.

If you just take a look at the outside – the clip is different. The BG42 is smooth and the s30v has a hump in the middle. Also on the BG42 the screws are matt and the S30v is shiny. (s30v on top)

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If you look at the top of the knife – the BG42 has finer tooling for the thumb grip than the s30v. Also – the frame is a little thinner on the BG42. (s30v on top)

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This is the best test – if you knife has no stamp on the blade – it is probably a BG42 or a ATS34 if it is older. (s30v on top)

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The frame will also have a date stamp on the inside of the scale if it is a newer knife.
The older one may or may not. – the best test is the stamp on the blade as shown. _(s30v 1st photo)

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Disclaimer - just my observation.
 
From what I understand, the S30V are stamped, the BG-42 and ATS34 are not. I asked CRK this and below is how they responded. Hopefully this will help a little......

We began with ATS 34 and changed to BG 42 in October of 1996. In January of 2002 we began using S30V and continue to use it today. The ATS 34 and BG 42 do not have markings. We marked the S30V blades with an S and recently with a C if they were Classic 2000 blades and not the standard Sebenza profile. Since we have discontinued the standard profile (except for our annual Limited Editions) we just mark the blades with a S. If your blade is not marked you may get an indication of the steel by the markings on the side of the handles. For a very long time (we do not have an exact date) we marked each handle run with an A, B or C depending on if it was the first, second or third run of the and the final two digits of the year. Example A02 for handles made in the beginning of 2002. This may give you an indication of the blade material, but is not a guarantee. I know Sebenza owners love to swap out faces and some even try to fit different blades especially on the second hand market. I hope that answers your questions. Please let me know if you have any more.
 
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