Buying a New "Traditional" Knife Sight Unseen

[black mamba]

I buy most of my knives on-line, and rarely get a "stinker." But, especially with stag, I like to see both sides, or better yet, to look at several before buying.
Here was an ideal situation: Driving down interstate 44 through Lebanon, Missouri, we stopped at Shepherd of the Hills. They had a Case red stag razor jack on sale, and I asked if I could choose between several. They had seven new in the box. Needless to say, I bought one with beautiful stag (the best of 7) and still paid the low sale price.

 

[Modoc ED]

I posted a new thread today titled "New Case 62009½ Arrived Today". I bought that Barlow Saturday morning over the internet and it arrived today.

All I had to go on were the pictures but it turned out to be a really nice looking knife -- even scales side to side.

 

[yobbos1]

I tend to stick with dealers who have dealt fairly with me in the past and ask them to examine knives for me before sending. This has always worked out well in the past for me but I never buy stag sight-unseen.

 

[A. G. Russell]

With Case Bone you can just about expect to get what you have in mind. Some of the set pattern acrylics you also know what you are going to get...for example if you see a duck feather advertised you know it will look like this:

However with stag I would never buy blind. Here are two AG Russell Mohawk Canoes, the one on the left was sold on the bay to someone other than myself, the one on the right I own. But if I ordered blind how would I know which one I would get?

It is all in how well it is photographed! The finish on the metal work would have been identical. Only the color of the antler is different. This was the first knife where it became important to teach the makers how to match stag, what they wanted to do was put the pretty stag on the name side and anything on the other. In the 1960s they seperated the stag into good looking and ugly and put ugly on the back side of every knife.