Joseph Rodgers Sheffield Bowie (?): Did I Miss Something? Is Something Wrong?

M

Mr. Scratch

Joined
Jun 12, 2006
Messages
12
Picked this up at the local flea market last weekend for a low cost. I thought it was strange, because the seller is a longtime dealer there, and he kind of specializes in this general sort of thing, so why so cheap (and willing to bargain in a way that suggested he was eager to sell it)? But the knife looked good, so I rolled the dice and bought it. A couple of hundred bucks.

Come to find out he had listed it on Ebay a month or two before, and sold it for well over double the cost. The very same knife. I know it was the same dealer, because he lives nearby (same as the location on the seller's auction) and sells the very same stuff both online and at the flea market. It looks like someone had bid on the knife, won it, and then backed out of the deal.

The knife sure looks good to my untrained novice eyes. Marked "RODGERS SHEFFIELD" with the star/cross of Joseph Rodgers. Patina looks genuine, blade darkening like I'd expect of a 100+ year old blade. Wood blackened from handling. Leather is the type and condition I'd expect of 19th or early 20th C. knife. Light scuffing and wear throughout in all the right places. I've found similar knives of the period, same boxy wooden handle with metal strip insert.

I can't come up with a good reason for a genuine knife to end up like this, resold for cheap at a flea market after failing to be paid for online... but when I hold it in-hand it sure looks good, and doesn't look or feel like I'd expect of a repro. What gives? It is just a well-done fake?


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Contact Jack Black on the traditional forum. He knows everything Sheffield.
 
Interesting. An awful lot of work to make and not get top dollar for. Definitely a correct Sheffield period design. Some of the work does look a little hastily done, like the file work on the front bolster. Can you tell what the wood is?
 
I’m not a wood guy, but it looks like oak to me. It’s very hard, and underneath the dark surface it is a light colored wood.
 
The knife is wrong. It's an Indian copy of a English and Huber / Huber style Bowie, that is being sold through re-enactor houses now. The knives come unmarked and are being stamped with all types of old trademarks.

Here's one example - https://www.crazycrow.com/frontier-...orleans-bowie-knife-w-ebony-grips-10in-blade/ , you can order them with some variations in handle material, sheath, etc.....

Knife it's based on -

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I'm not very knowledgable about such things, but I thought the knife looked fairly legit. These con artists are getting better with their aging processes. The only thing I noticed was, like a poster above, the detail work on the bolsters and guard looks crude.
 
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Look at the bright side, if you were looking for a cool knife to mount and display on your wall, this works. You probably wouldn‘t want a real version of the knife where it could be easily damaged by exposure sun light or mishandling. Here you have a low risk conversation piece, and the artificial aging on these things might become a minor folk art in its own right. I would just mark it as a fake. As long as it was properly represented as such, the $200 price was close to the mark.

n2s
 
Okay, thanks guys. I had a feeling something was hinky here, and didn't want to resell a fake knife later down the road.
 
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