How to determine if a knife is fake, counterfeit, or authentic?

S

SteveTQP

Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
6
Greetings!
If a knife looks and feels like the "real thing", is quite sharp, has all appropriate labeling on the blade, correct Torx screws, blade centered, company insert in box, etc., how can one determine its authenticity? Thank you!
 
Short of contacting the manufacturer, you can't really.

You could take it to a lab to have the steel analyzed with spectroscopy, but all that will confirm is what type of steel it is (although many fakes do NOT have the correct steel that the originals are made of).

One sign that you didn't mention, is the quality and crispness of any stampings/rollmarks/laser etching. The majority of fakes have blurry and poorly done rollmarkings - but even those are getting better as the counterfeiters up their game.
 
I've seen two fake knives before or two that I knew were fake. The first was a small Sebenza and it was obvious it was fake. It had different screws, lock up was nothing like a CRK, different washers, blade shape looked off.

The second one was a benchmade bugout and I only knew it was fake because I was told it was fake. The packaging was the same and the knife looked extremely extremely close to the real thing. If you looked close the s30v on the side of the blade was just a little different and it wasn't nearly as smooth as a real bugout. Be careful the counterfiters are getting good.
 
Experience -- looking at and handling LOTS of knives and knowing what the real thing "should" look/feel like.

YouTube actually is a quite useful resource for getting tips for determining the authenticity of specific knives. I used a YouTube video to assess the authenticity of a Spyderco Yojimbo. The differences were actually quite subtle. Fake boxes that go w/fake knives are easier to discern.

Lacking experience or the time/desire to gain experience . . . as already suggested above, only buy from an "authorized" dealer or, if it's a 2ndary sale, ask for help from members here on BF.
 
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I have a few views on this. Some of these fakes are really good copies. Often manufacturers change things to thwart counterfeits or they just change things as needed which makes it hard for the average individual to always tell.

Counterfeiters have to make a profit. Even though their product may look exactly the same there usually is a cost cutting material used in place of the real thing provided the item being counterfeited is high quality in some cases where the item is not high quality and just a popular item with a brand sticker the counterfeit may actually be as good or better but this is not usually the case. I have heard some counterfeits are originals made in the same factory and illegally sold without knowledge of the owner.

The whole purpose of counterfeiting is to make money not spend more than it would cost to just buy the real thing and sell it a regular prices. Unfortunately fit and finish can be really good due to CAD controlled machinery that is the standard today and widely available.

If your blade says S30V and it cuts like a standard 440 series maybe it is a 440 type of steel. Was it unusually inexpensive? Did it come from a questionable source? Is the metal hardware unusually soft? Often cheesy packaging is a sign.

Experts are familiar with almost undetectable defects in originals that are a fingerprint of sorts matching them to the original factory machinery but this can change too.

Is it a hard to engineer specialty design that looks up to spec and high quality in which case counterfeiting it would not really yield good profits or a simple popular design of medium to low quality that people love which is simple enough to inexpensively duplicate and make a good profit off of.

Not much answers here sorry. If you have doubts take clear detailed pictures of the item and email them to the manufacturer they can often tell. If you send it in and it is a fake you most likely will not get it back.

Counterfeiters do pay attention to internet posts and improve their copies to make them harder to identify as fakes.
 
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Like others have said, a big step in the right direction is to buy from a reputable company. I avoid fleabea, amazonian, etc. for knives.

Now if you are looking for that knife discontinued 10 years ago, fleabea (among others) is hard to avoid. Then the waters get murky.

I try to throw business to places that support BF too.

When I buy off the forum here, good pics + original box (if possible) + sellers rep is what I go by.
 
K.O.D. said:
There are often "tells" on fakes, but not always. Buying from reputable dealers (ie: not ebay, amazon, aliexpress,etc) helps tremendously.
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There are authorized dealers that sell on Ebay. I have had several good purchases there but I always confirm that the dealer is authorized first.
 
If someone posts a picture of a questionable knife and I own the original, I can usually tell by looking closely at the lettering on the laser etchings. For example, lately I've noticed that on the fake Bugouts, the copright "R" sign is usually larger than on a real Benchmade. Sometimes it can be very close though.
 
Fake, counterfeit a knock-off . . .or mfg under license.

In the early 200s, Darrel Ralph designed and marketed a line of folders he called "Madd Maxx". High alloy steels and Damascus blades with titanium frame-locking handles with exotic inlays. They cost over a grand. Camillus soon offered a close copy with D2 blades and simple anodized titanium handles for a tenth as much . . .under license. I bought one for $125 and should have taken out a loan for a hundred more. See what they sell for on e-Bay now.

That was not a fake.

I have a friend who owned a pawn shop. He is retired ow. One day we talked about watches, and Rolexes came up. He schooled me on fake ones and real ones and a few he knew to be collatable etc. Then he went into his office and came out with a watch and challenged me to tell if it was real or not. I said it was real based on what he had just taught me to look for. Nope! Not real he said.

Turns out, that watch had a movement correct for Rolex, in a case correct for Rolex and so on . . .all stuff that came from the factories that made parts for Rolex. But it was not from Rolex, it eas a back door item or maybe pieced together from otherwise genuine parts by . . .someone somewhere. The tell was that the serial number was so wrong for that model and year etc . .and it was not a "real" Rolex.

I was given a Spiderco knife for Christmas. Its a big one (too big for me) and lfels like a quality knife. I do not see a model designation on it anywhere. There is small engraving on the choil that indicates Spiderco and the alloy on one side and "China" on the other. I have wondered at this for months and still don't know. I have been told that Spiderco has knives made in China, but shouldn't it say what model it is?
 
Each knife has it's own tells and those that are serious collectors of that brand and model often know them.. So you can ask here with photos, ask the maker or just buy from reputable dealers.
 
Counterfeiters need to be able to make their money back quickly, and at scale, so unless a particular knife is really popular, or has been around a long time, they generally are going to come out in one big batch, all be pretty close to the same, and thus have all the same "tells". Sure some brands have more variations and versions of particular models, but in knives, it's nothing like it is with watches. I can think of a few clear examples, Falkniven F1, Vic rescue, and Vic Swisschamp jump to mind. So a good way to look is to see if anyone else has reported finding fakes in the wild. In general, unless you are really unlucky, someone will have spotted the fakes as they filter through the wholesale channels to smaller shifty retailers, and "fingerprinted" them. Some are obvious, and some, like the mentioned Bugout, can be really tough.
This also needs to be broken out against the various "hand-made, and semi-custom" knives that float around everywhere, which may not really be counterfeit, but are still just crap.
If you search for the name of the knife and the word counterfeit and don't come up with any confirmed cases, then you are probably pretty safe, so long as it's a pretty common knife. If you get into the custom/semi-custom/high end brands then for all anyone knows it may well be worth a small maker's time to make only a few fakes if they know they can move them for several thousand dollars a pop.
Then also be aware of the retailer's return policy. If a knife exists as a fake, and you are buying from a large retailer (or website) that simply shelves returns, then there is a good chance you will end up with a fake, since bogus returns are not likely to be caught, and there is a pretty sizable "industry" of return scamming.
 
Yes it's true there are authorized dealers on the bay.

I think the biggest risk of getting a fake is looking for a deal that's too good to be true. All the reputable/authorized stores are charging $$$ for a knife, but one place/person is only charging $$. To me, that is immediately suspicious, especially if it's one of the aforementioned places. Occasionally there are great deals to be found at reputable places, but most of the time, prices are the same across the board, because of MAP.
 
A year or so ago, e-Bay had a series of offerings for knives described as "Chris Reeve Green Beret" knives. They were said to have the correct alloy and overall profile. In fact, they looked to be genuine, except the price was under $100. The TGTBT flag went up.

So I looked more closely. The blade markings were somewhat different, and the handle material looked slightly different in color and texture. I contacted CRK via email to ask about that. They said that counterfeits were being imported from China. Other folders advertised to be CRK Sebenza models were offered online too but were described as having the wrong blade steel (D2).
 
VorpelSword said:
A year or so ago, e-Bay had a series of offerings for knives described as "Chris Reeve Green Beret" knives. They were said to have the correct alloy and overall profile. In fact, they looked to be genuine, except the price was under $100.

So I looked more closely. The blade markings were somewhat different, and the handle material looked slightly different in color and texture. I contacted CRK via email to ask about that. They said that counterfeits were being imported from China. Other folders advertised to be CRK Sebenza models were offered online too but were described as having the wrong blade steel (D2).
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I saw some "E-Benzas" being advertised with "rare D2 steel" 🤣🤣🤣🤣
They also had the extra tell-tale screw in the lock-bar too!
 
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