boker usa?

Dijos

Dijos

Joined
Nov 20, 2001
Messages
2,600
I finally got around to starting to fix my grandfather's pocketknife. He was an electrician in the 50's and 60's. From its appearance, it looked like a camillus electrician's knife, but when i cleaned up the main blade, it is marked "boker usa". I did a quick search to find if they are still made, and I can't find an example of one. My question is twofold-When was it made, and did boker make them in the US? I'll shoot this over to Levines forum in a few days, but I wanted to see if anyone here knew first.
 
U S of A.
The plant, which I believe was in Maryland, has now been closed. If memory serves all the Boker knives are now made in Germany and Argentina.
 
A quick history....

Boker of Solingen Germany was founded in 1869 and the US was a significant market for them....they opened an import office in NYC.

Then the cutlery tarriffs of the 1890's changed things for foreign cutlery firms. Boker responded by purchasing the Valley Forge Cutlery Company of New Jersey.....the plant produced both Valley Forge and Boker USA stamped knives up until about WWII, when the Valley Forge brand was dropped. Boker USA was very strong post-WWII....they also made contract knives including most of the John Primble knives for Belknap Hardware.

At the same time they were importing the Solingen made Boker knives...so a Boker USA display would typically have both the USA made knives and the Solingen made knives.

The Cooper group of NC bought Boker including the USA plant located in MApleweeod NJ, and the importing rights, in the early 1970's. They closed the Maplewood plant in the early 80's, andl later gave up the importing rights.

At that time Boker Solingen set up an office in Colorado to act as the US importing office for Boker knives.
 
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