Case Vault Series

STDK

STDK

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Jul 31, 2006
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Anyone heard about Case retiring certain models for 3 years and then bringing them back out. I know the Cheetah is one of them. This just ticks me off. Another false collector series. :thumbdn:
 
Toss in the regular Doc, as well. I'm fine with most things Case does, but this is just to make hype. If a model sells poorly, discontinue it and keep the tooling. Don't act like putting it in "The Vault" is anything but marketing.
 
I don't know if you've followed the Schrade and Camillus saga, but I'm for Case doing anything it can to keep on making good knives right here in the USA. Better that than going under or outsourcing to Asia, right?

You know that collectors, not pocketknife users, are the folks who keep Case going, and the folks at Case know it.

Their doing this doesn't trouble me one bit (then again, I'm not a knife "collector," just a guy who has some knives and loves to carry and use them).
 
Doesn't the Walt Disney Comapany do the same with movies?

Anyhow, I would personally like to see Case try to bring back the user- to try to work with big box stores. This has worked well for Spyderco and Buck. I bet a lot of people would love to buy a Sodbuster or Peanut or Stockman at Wal-mart or the like, particularly if it says USA on it.
 
Well, there's Case sodbuster juniors and 2 kinds of lockbacks at the Lowe's around the corner from me. None at Walmart, but there's a ton at the knife shop on the other end of Main, and then the Ace has a nice section of their display case with a variety of Case stuff in it.
 
The local Ace Hardware here is where I go for all my Case knives, but their selection is shrinking.

As for the original topic, maybe I don't understand the question, but it seems to me that Case has been doing this sort of thing for a hundred years. At any given time, they have only a part of their patterns in production.
 
I agree with both arguments and Ive also heard it said before. Case makes a collectors knife, discontinues it and brings it back and so on and so forth making it somewhat less collectible. But the thought of another knife made in the usa being sold out to aisa or some overseas company makes me sick. So I guess whatever ya gotta do to keep one of the few quality usa knife companys in business works for me. just my 2 cents! - Joel
 
mnblade said:
I don't know if you've followed the Schrade and Camillus saga, but I'm for Case doing anything it can to keep on making good knives right here in the USA. Better that than going under or outsourcing to Asia, right?

You know that collectors, not pocketknife users, are the folks who keep Case going, and the folks at Case know it.

Their doing this doesn't trouble me one bit (then again, I'm not a knife "collector," just a guy who has some knives and loves to carry and use them).
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Yes, I followed the Schrade and Camillus saga, but how is putting a design away for 3 years and driving up the secondary market price on a knife helping Case. They are still wholesaling the product to other dealers. Maybe it will Spike their sales, I don't know. And I agree on keeping USA knives USA. I own 3 China made knives but will not carry them it just does not "Feel Right".
I just hate that a company like Case is trying to get even deeper into my pocket by creating "Planned shortages of certain patterns. It reminds too much of the petroleum industries. Sorry about the rant but I had to let it out.
 
Be interesting to KNOW which patterns are low sellers.

collectors' items they may be, but CASE are very much knives to be used, mine are anyway:thumbup:
 
Forced scarcity doesn't appeal to me. They seem to already do the same thing with the elephant toenail.
 
I think we should all bear in mind that we knife knuts are a very small percentage of the whole population. Even if every member of this forum liked exactly the same things, unless we purchased every one of a pattern that we saw (in spite of already having a dozen or more identical knives at home) we could not keep a pattern in production. To keep anything in continuous production we need the help of the general public.

The elephant toenail is a good example. It is a pattern I love. I have a dozen from different makers. But John Q. Public doesn't seem to leap at the chance to buy a wide, heavy, two-hands-to-open, clipless pocket knife. Frankly, there isn't much real need for such a knife in this day and age. So how many could Case sell each year? My guess would be that if the pattern was in constant production Case would sell less than a thousand a year on average. That just isn't enough volume to bother with, and the pattern would soon be dropped completely and forever.
 
yablanowitz said:
But John Q. Public doesn't seem to leap at the chance to buy a wide, heavy, two-hands-to-open, clipless pocket knife.
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That describes a lot of what Case sells. Rough Rider, whoever the heck that actually is, seems to be selling a lot of them.
 
If you make something cheap enough, someone will buy it. It's the same principle that garage sales work on. I thought we were talking about real knives ;)
 
yablanowitz said:
If you make something cheap enough, someone will buy it. It's the same principle that garage sales work on. I thought we were talking about real knives ;)
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You said it wasn't going to sell enough based on general functional aspects of the design. If people really didn't want that sort of knife, it can't be sold cheap enough because whatever sort of knife they do want is already available for any price.

The cheap ones sell, and the Case versions sell for ridiculously high prices. People clearly want them.
 
I believe the Case Sunfish sell at high prices in their deliberately limited quantities to a rather small market driven largely by collector rather than user interest. I could be wrong. The only way I know to determine that is to get Case to produce a few hundred thousand, send every dealer a few hundred and see how long it takes to sell them all.

Judging by the junk knives I have seen selling at gunshows, convenience stores, truck stops and garage sales, the general public will buy anything if it is cheap enough. Even if it isn't really what they want or need. Of course, I've never seen a Elephant Toenail for sale in any of those places.

Even more telling in my opinion is the small fact that in almost fifty years, I have never encountered anyone other than myself actually carrying a sunfish for real use. If they were really wanted for actual use, I'm fairly sure I would have seen that at least once by now. Maybe it is just because I live out here in the middle of nowhere, though.
 
yablanowitz said:
I believe the Case Sunfish sell at high prices in their deliberately limited quantities to a rather small market driven largely by collector rather than user interest. I could be wrong. The only way I know to determine that is to get Case to produce a few hundred thousand, send every dealer a few hundred and see how long it takes to sell them all.

Judging by the junk knives I have seen selling at gunshows, convenience stores, truck stops and garage sales, the general public will buy anything if it is cheap enough. Even if it isn't really what they want or need. Of course, I've never seen a Elephant Toenail for sale in any of those places.

Even more telling in my opinion is the small fact that in almost fifty years, I have never encountered anyone other than myself actually carrying a sunfish for real use. If they were really wanted for actual use, I'm fairly sure I would have seen that at least once by now. Maybe it is just because I live out here in the middle of nowhere, though.
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My experience also, I've never known anyone who owned a toenail or sunfish in my entire life. Not even known anyone who collects them, much less users. I didn't even know such a pattern EXISTED until the last few years when I became more interested in knife collecting.
 
My first exposure to the sunfish pattern was through a comic strip called Pogo that was written before I was born. Walt Kelly drew his characters using them, and I thought they looked cool. I was almost forty before I found out that they weren't just a cartoon, but a real pattern.
 
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