A knife is a basic tool. Everyone needs at least a few, at least a couple of kitchen knives, a few table knives, maybe one for cutting open boxes and other house-hold tasks. For many people, a nice set of Chicago Cutlery kitchen knives from Target, the knives that came with their silverwear, and maybe one of those Stanley OTF utility knives will be all the knives they'll ever want or need. These people may own fifteen or twenty knives total in their whole estate the most expensive of which might be worth $25. If you're involved in "high knife content activities", hunting, camping, boating, that sort of thing, then you may need a few specialty knives to support those activities. But, I know many avid hunters, for example, for whom hunting adds only a few knives to life's needs and none of those is worth more than $100. I have one friend who is a very avid, very serious, and very successful hunter, camper, outdoorsman (has not failed to get a deer with a bow in many years). He finds it unbelievable that I might spend more that $100 on a knife. I finally got him to spring for a Benchmade AFCK. He likes it, but he's a lot more excited about some new piddly thing that he got for his bow.
For other people, though, knives become a hobby unto themselves. We buy knives we certainly don't need, have no use for, and will probably or even certainly never use.
I think I own a lot of watches. I have five. There are two that I sort of alternate between every day. They're very similar. I lost the first, bought the second, and then found the first again so now I have two. Neither is worth more than maybe $100. I've got one I was given as a gift that simple and not overly valuable, and two others that are sort of fancier for dress-up but neither of those is worth more that $200. I was recently walking in downtown Portland with a friend on our way to meet some other people for lunch. We passed a local jewelry store and paused to look at the watches in the window. I know he's an avid collector. Well, running late for lunch we still had to go inside and I watched my watch while he dropped $6000 on another watch. He already owns over a hundred (that's all he'll say).
If he owns a hundred watches and wears them equally, then he'll wear that new watch 3.65 days per year. If he lives another fifty years, then he'll wear that watch about 182 days in his life. That means that that watch will cost him $32.88 per day that he wears it. For $32.88, you can buy a perfectly funcitonal, perfectly stylish watch that will probably serve you just fine for years. But, don't try and tell my friend that. On the subject of watches, common sense makes no sense to him.
And that, my friends, is the definition of collector.
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Chuck
Balisongs -- because it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!
http://www.balisongcollector.com
