Candidly speaking, the Swiss Army Knives are a better value at their price point, because virtually all of them you can buy today will be flawless. As an example, given where you purchase them, a Victorinox ALOX Pioneer X (pick a color!) will be around the same price as multiple Case models, but will almost certainly have better fit, finish, and of course better overall utility. This is because Case has decided that it's ok to forego QC because when you're producing hundreds of thousands of knives a year, at least most of them should be good, right? So what's the big deal? Just ship it all out! (- The President of Case, probably)
The issue with your idea is that in order to collect something that will have residual value, you're going to have to trawl through Ebay for older Case models, because most current knives are going to have fitment issues that no one is going to want to pay for on secondary, leaving you with a pile of knives no one wants. Feel free to search through multiple slipjoint communities on Facebook, Reddit, and the Porch here for confirmation. Most people have been burned so many times ordering Case knives from online, that many refuse to buy Case sight unseen anymore. Additionally, if you're wanting to collect older Case knives, those will cost more, given that there are many collectors out there who are going to know the real value. Buying collectibles from other collectors at market value isn't a great way to grow your received value, incidentally.
So, given that the likelihood of receiving a knife with issues is very high when buying new Case knives from dealers, whereas the likelihood of receiving a SAK with issues from those same dealers is very low, the SAKs are probably a better draw.
It's also good to understand that the steel on both Case knives and SAKs is nothing to write home about. You'll be sharpening either knife after any sort of extensive cutting task. That said, another thing SAKs have going for them is their toolset, something Case knives aren't going to have.
One last point to make is that SAKs have become much more collectible as well. Seems like virtually every dealer has a special color of some ALOX model or other, as well as exclusive patterned Cellidor (plastic) scale models as well. There's plenty out there to find on Ebay also, and having gotten heavily "re-interested" recently in SAKs, I have purchased several neat, discontinued, or hard to find examples/models and haven't paid more than like $85 for any of them (though I have also paid more than that for a couple special ones!). For someone used to hundreds of dollars for a single knife, it's awesome to be able to spend less money, and have a handful of great knives.
Anyway, I wish you the best, both knives have their draw, though for me personally, the answer is easy: Victorinox takes it.
- Signed, someone who has purchased many Case knives in his life, along with many, many Victorinox knives.
) to Case, but only by a very small margin.
