Prior to 1996, Case used a brushed finish on many but not all of their stainless steel pocket knife patterns. It was kind of a mixed bag, the plain bone handled modles and most wood or compostion models had brushed blades, while red bone and stag handled knives had mirror finished stainless.
Beginning as of 1996, the "standard" seems to be that all stainless knives were made with a polished finish except for the basic delrin and pakkawood working knives series. They have done some SFO knives in bone with the brushed finish blades however.
All stainless bladed Case pocket knives can be identified as stainless because the letters "SS" will be either after the pattern number or on the tang of one of the secondary blades, or both.
As to the curly maple handled pocket knives, they were all made in SS; the first series in 1989 had polished blades while later ones in 1991-1993 had brushed blades.
