Do you remember your first "serious" knife?

My old man lost his Puma cub and replaced it with the stag handled version(duke or earl I can’t recall). He then proceeded to find the cub and presented it to me. Must’ve been 1990 give or take a year, it replaced an SAK clone. I was 14 or 15 at the time, lost the Puma in a hay field one summer in high school.
That was a serious knife at the time.
 
Do you remember your first "serious" knife?
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Hell yes.
Buck 110 baby.
It was the early '80s. I was like twenty two working in "the big city" far from home. But I was working my dream job and had a nice house right down town. THINGS WERE GOOD !
I bought the 110 on my lunch break at the little mom and pop hardware store up the street from where I worked. Shock's Hardware. Ed and Edna Shock; GREAT PEOPLE ! ! ! !

What do you mean by serious?
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When the great jazz vocalist Kurt Elling was asked "So . . . what is Jazz ? How do you define it ?
He said " It's not easy to put into words but like pornography you know it when you hear it".
When you see and hold a serious knife . . . you know it. ;)

I stil have it !
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At 12 I was allowed to start working for myself and was able to buy my first new knife. It was a Case Texas Toothpick Medium. That was 40+ years ago.
Bought it from a little neighborhood food mart.
Bought my first serious fixed blade at 15. KABAR USMC. Yes sir, couldn’t have been happier. Beat the crap out of that thing. Gifted it to my nephew 25+ yrs later. His eyes lit up when I asked him if he wanted it. It never left his side for the next two days at camp. I new I gave it to right person.
 
No "serious" knives, all happy go lucky
I can't remember ever having a knife that wasn't capable of it's intended tasks. I pre-date china crap. But my Alox SAK and Barlow were some of my earliest knives.
 
Not only do I remember it, but I seriously miss it...one of the 3 knives I've plain lost in my 20ish years chasing knives.

It was a Benchmade 720, black blade, non serrated, and with the Benchmade Butterfly on the handle. I stumbled across it at the gear shop at the trap and skeet range my dad and I were shooting at. All the other benchmades were marked $150 plus and somehow this amazing 720 priced at $70 seemed too good to be true and I jumped on it. I had recently almost cut off 3 fingers while messing around with a Chinese knife that closed on my hands when the liner lock failed so the Axis lock seemed like a revelation at the time.

When I got home from the range and admired my new knife and its box closer, I saw that there was a faded "1" in front of the "70" on the pricetag; the elderly woman ringing me up obviously didn't see the faded price very well.

I carried and used the hell out of that knife exclusively for the next 3-4 years and I fell in love (but still didn't make it to bladeforums as I only visited Subaru forums at the time). I even once lost it in a snowstorm in Rhode Island just outside my campus apartment - about a week later as the snow is melting I see that butterfly handle peaking out of the snow and was miraculously reunited with my 720 which looked like it had been run over at least once...it still functioned wonderfully. It looked great with those new battle scars!

Wherever you are, dear 720, I miss you dearly :'(

It is the only axis lock benchmade I would care to own at this point in my life.



Replacing my 720 in 2005 is when I first found bladeforums, but only ever lurked until signing up early 2011 -- and then things really got out of hand!
 
I picked up a Gerber Gator in the late-90's. Twenty-something bucks I think. It was a solid knife and it took the abuse of an angsty teenager with no damage. Carried it for a few years and later threw it into a trade.
 
In the late 90's my brother gave me my first knife/serious knife. It was a Spyderco Harpy SS PE. Carried it through middle and high school. Still can't believe the school staff never noticed or cared that i was carrying that; for that long.
 
I bought a kershaw scallion when I was 12 that I saved up for over a few months..I wanted the leek but it was too much haha..before that I had some bucks and my first knife was a SAK classic I begged my dad for at age 5...i loved it and ended up having like 8 of them early on that inquired through thrift stores. Wish I still had them...

I bought a leek at 19 out of nostalgia for my scallion..then early this year (26 now) I realized I have the extra funds to finally buy one of those knives with the butterfly on it I drooled over as a youngin haha bought a few benchmades and sold em all and am now engaged in the full on addiction. I feel like it's been a long time coming. Still haven't broken the $500 knife barrier but I'm working on it! Slippery slope
 
When I was a teen I remember two knives I bought that I loved and would consider good well kinda on the first it was a S&W M&P assisted knife that I thought was the best thing ever mostly bc it looked cool.

The first pretty good quality knife I bought was a case mini trapper yellow cv when I was 15ish.
 
Spyderco PM2 started it. There have been many come and go since, but that PM2 I will always have.
 
Spyderco caly3..

I bought it second hand and had never heard of spyderco at the time. The guy who sold it to me was in disbelief that I had never heard of them, and told me I was going to get hooked on them. He was right.
 
I have never bought gimmick knives or Chinese knives. All of the knives I have ever had were quality barlows, quality stockmans, quality fixed blades. When I was a kid, I had some really good pocket knives but I saved up my allowance and walked to the local country store and bought a Solingen fixed blade with a stag handle that I kept for 54 years, until recently. After that I had quality Buck knives, Benchmade, and Spyderco knives. I was never one for cheap stuff when it comes to knives.
 
Spyderco PM2. I was so impressed when I got it that I immediately ordered another. That was followed a week later by a 940. Just recently I got into high end EDC's when I bought a Hinderer XM24 in M390. Now, I'm saving up for a large sebenza 21. And it all started one year ago with a $20 Kershaw.
 
For me that is a complicated question to answer. I did not start my collection in the same way most people did: getting useful knives, tools you could use for daily chores, food preparation, camping, carving, etc. My interest in blades started because I liked medieval weapons: swords and daggers. I could not afford swords so I started a collection of worthless S.S. wall hangers. It was not until I was 21 that I got my first "battle ready", high carbon steel dagger(Since I could not yet afford a sword). It was a Torino Main Gauche from Hanweii:
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You could argue the first "serious" blade I bought was a Cold Steel Recon Tanto which is what I got a couple of years after purchasing the main gauche. Then again, the only reason why I got it is because I jumped on the "Tacticool" wagon and I was also concerned about tip integrity of the needle and spear point blades. Also it is not really something I'll really ever use. It is still inside the box. Not even the Benchmade Nim Cub II Tanto that I got 4 years later could possibly qualify as a "serious" blade as I'll probably never use either and kinda regret buying along with the Recon because ultimately I grew to dislike the dark coated tacticool tanto blades.

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In all honesty, I think the first serious knives I bought were a Mora Companion MG and a little Aitor Castor pen knife (I wish it had a locking mechanism. It would be perfect). They might cost a fraction of what I paid for the other crap but they are worth their weight in gold. Pretty useful. I carried the Castor daily until I got something else.

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Gerber Shorty, which I lost over multiple moving across the Pacific and the main land.
More than 25 years ago......

It served me well on solo camping trips.
 
Spyderco, stainless Endura. Fully serrated. That knife opened my eyes that there other options beside small Case or Buck friction folders.
 
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