First Knife Ever Acquired

Mens Abdita

Mens Abdita

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Dec 16, 2025
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The first knife I ever purchased was a Buck 110 clone. I bought it in the supply shop of a campground in I-have-absolutely-no-idea when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old. I loved that knife, and had no others to compare it to. (I also know the second knife I ever purchased: that was a Wenger SAK when I was just shy of 13).
Naturally, with 35 years passing including teenage years and young adulthood, etc, and this thing must have made its way to steel heaven. And in fact, decades went by without giving this knife any thought at all.

Then, a few months ago, I was visiting my mother and a package came. To open it, my mother reached into a drawer and pulled out the very knife from decades ago. It boggles my mind that a) it was in her possession for that long without me ever encountering it, and b) that she had it at all. She has moved twice since leaving my childhood home, severely downsizing each time!

So, here it is, in all its Pakistani glory!

(Does anyone else know the whereabouts of their first knife?)
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I wish I still had the first one I bought with my own money, but I've repurchaced the same model a few times over the years. For me it was an Old Timer 1040T in about 1984 or so. I remember buying it from the Cenex feed store during a warm summer day in Barron, WI. After carying it everywhere for about 2 weeks, I was making a cane pole out of some fresh bamboo I had cut from my grandparent's farm. I remember trying to split the butt to attach the line and I broke the mainblade. The "knives aren't prybars" lesson was self-taught that day. I was heartbroken. That moment is probably the clearest memory I have from those days. I don't remember what I did with it, but I wish I still had it.
 
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This Buck 309 was the first knife I ever bought. Bought it with my paper route money. I was 14 years old (67 now). Carried it through school and for a few years after until it got retired. Had it in my pocket when I got married in 1980. Still got the knife and the same wife. 🤣
John 😎
 
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jmh33 said:
Had it in my pocket when I got married in 1980. Still got the knife and the same wife.
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must be nice.
the knife I had in my pocket (a scout/camp knife) when I got wedded in 1985, and that wife both left me about 3 years later. 😭 I sure miss that knife ...
(her brothers tried to warn me about her. I should have listened to them. They knew her a lot longer than I did.) She dumped me for (one of) her boyfriends. 🤨 Her loss; my gain. 😇👍
 
First pocket knife I ever bought was at the local flea market back when I was probably about 12 for a few dollars. It was a modern folder with assisted opening. It was garbage steel, poor construction, as ergonomic as a block of steel, but back then I thought it was like a $500 spyderco haha. I still have the knife, won't post pictures since it's a modern folder, but fun to still keep it around.
 
When I was 10, I bought a generic cork-handled fishing knife at the Howard AFB (Canal Zone) BX. It cost 3 bucks and is now lost to the ages.
My first decent knife was a Buck 102, purchased at the Elmendorf AFB AK BX for $13 and change with my paper route income (this was about '78). I was a scout and it served me quite well on many adventures. I retired it a few years ago.
 
My dad bought me one of these at the local 98¢ only store when I was 7.
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It was a completely useless piece of garbage, but was just sharp-ish enough and lasted just long enough for me to figure out how to use a knife without cutting myself.
Obviously I no longer have it, the thing barely lasted a year before coming apart on me while trying to turn a screw.
My dad promptly scrounged up an old frost cutlery lockback from the junk drawer and gave that to me.
I think I might still have it around somewhere.

The 1st knife I ever bought myself was from a jar of assorted keychain knives on the counter of the local auto parts store for $1.25.
I no longer have that one either, but I had various flavors of these cheap junkers over the years.
They were not good knives, but certainly functional and I only ever had one fall apart on me.
I may still have one around here somewhere, but wouldn't post it because they aren't particularly traditional.
 
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I think I was four when my father bought me my first knife, purchased from the Glynco Naval Air Station base exchange. (He was in Lighter Than Air.) I don't remember anything about it except hearing my mother tell the story of walking into the back yard and finding my friend Richard and me playing with our knives, "Their hands covered in blood." I'm sure that was an exaggeration! :oops:😁
 
The first knife I ever received was a tiny little novelty knife that was loosely based on one of those flat, rectangular keychain knives, some no name that was lost to time not long after I got it. It was absolutely useless trash, but it had had a dinosaur on it, so seven year old me thought it was cool. Then, some time after that, my Father showed me how to use, and then gave me, an Ontario Pilot's knife he had, that I used to go on adventures in the woods behind our house where we lived at the time. I still have that knife kicking around in my collection, as he gave it to me a couple of years ago after he found it in a box when clearing out his home office during a remodel. I need to track that down. My second and third and fourth knives were:

- Second: A Victorinox SwissChamp when I joined the Boy Scouts, stolen on the first Camporee we went to with all the other region's Troops. "A Scout is Trustworthy", indeed. 😖
- Third: A Wenger locking blade Swiss Army Knife with leather belt sheath, still have that one!!!
- Fourth: A Gerber Gator, given to me when I attended my first National Jamboree, still own that one as well!

After that, my recollection gets a bit hazy, but I can say that for the most part, I still own almost every knife I was given by my parents.
 
This is, as near as I can tell, a duplicate of the first knife I bought for the princely sum of $1.49 at the Katz drug store at the age of 9. A few years ago, I went fishing in the bay for old memories like this one.
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My first knife was a Colonial Forest-Master scout knife that was a gift when I was 9 or 10 years old in 1960 or 1961. I don't remember if it was a gift from my parents, or if one of my classmates gave it to me as a birthday gift (approved by my parents, I'm guessing). In my family, I and each of my siblings got to have a "real" birthday party to which we could invite classmates on our 10th birthday. (On other birthdays, the celebration involved just family: siblings, grandparents, sometimes cousins, aunts, uncles.) My recollection is that the knife came from a classmate at that 10th birthday party, which would have been December 1961, when I was in 5th grade. I carried that knife every day on the dairy farm where I grew up from the day I got it until I left for college in the fall of 1969. After that, it was mainly in my desk drawer until January of 2014, when I decided to start carrying a knife again.

I still have the knife. Here are a couple of photos:
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- GT
 
My oldest knife is an Ulster scout knife which I was gifted in the mid 1960s when I entered Scouts. Still have it.
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The first knife I ever bought myself was a Gerber Silver Knight lockback drop point in MOP. I carried it for about 14 years before I lost it. When I recounted this story in Bladeforums about 15 years ago, a very gracious member gifted me a similar one, which I still have. I use it at Christmas to open gifts.
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After I lost the Gerber I bought a Buck-Lite #424, also a lockback drop point, which I still have. Up until I discovered the stockman pattern I was a dyed-in-the-wool drop point guy.
This was also my first mod. I busted about 3/16" off the tip using it as a screwdriver and reground it back to a tip. It has a tighter belly now but still works well.
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