I went down the knife-accumulating path by first being drawn to modern knives. This began roughly 30+ years ago, for me. At the time, I was impressed by the beefy build of most of them and the engineering precision going into the manufacture of them (the better ones, anyway). That lent a certain 'cool factor' in their appeal to me. There's certainly nothing wrong with that - I still admire technical precision in knives and most anything else built with that sort of 'smart' behind it, in design and execution.
But over time, I also found I wasn't too fond of thick blade grinds, thumb studs on blades or pocket clips. I had to use them for awhile to know that. Thumb studs can be hard on thumbs and sometimes get snagged in pockets, trying to open the blade while it's in there - a friend of mine shed some blood in an incident occurring just like that. And pocket clips are tough on furniture or anything you might brush up against with your hip. But most of my disenchantment with moderns was all about the thick-edged blades with inherently mediocre slicing geometry, which therefore required some heavy reprofiling to optimize. And so, the Traditional knives I then gravitated toward all had the opposite to that in common: very thin & elegant blade grinds that were beautiful slicers and easy to resharpen.
I did have one interesting experience many years ago, that left me reconsidering my choice of moderns vs. something else. I had carried moderns clipped into my right front pocket pretty regularly and hadn't thought much about it. But in the grocery store one day, standing in the checkout lane, I noticed a fairly young father with a young boy standing in the line just behind me. The boy seemed to be staring at the knife clipped into my pocket. I don't know why he was staring - I don't know if he knew or understood what it was, or if there was some fear or intimidation he felt in seeing it. He was holding pretty close to his Dad there, while he was looking at it. But it bothered me that the knife clipped into my pocket was drawing that sort of attention, and it made me uncomfortable about carrying a pocket-clipped knife from then on.
I contrast that experience with another in a public setting, when I was in a doctor's office waiting room with my Dad, waiting for his appointment. I noticed an older gentleman, across from me, very subtly reach into his pants pocket to produce a very small traditional pocket knife, like a small jack or maybe a stockman. He very discreetly opened the blade, did a little bit of fingernail cleaning with it, and then very quietly palmed the knife while closing the blade, then slipping it back into his pocket. No big display about it, and all the others sitting near him didn't even take notice. I was impressed at the subtlety and modesty of it, and I realized that's what I like about folks who carry and like to use traditional knives. They're simple and subtle and modest about the way they publicly go about things, without drawing attention to themselves. That suits me.
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