Knife Certificates

Karl B. Andersen

Karl B. Andersen

Joined
Jul 27, 2003
Messages
5,666
In view of Phillip Patton's recent thread on his certificates, what do you folks like to see on the certs you get with your knives?
How much information is too much information?
Mine are printed on parchment with a personalized knife name.
Is this enough info?


cert1-1.jpg


cert-1.jpg
 
Original price is nice to have for insurance purposes. Otherwise, looks good to me.

Roger
 
I like a bill for insurance purposes, but I like that separately from the COA. The COA should have all the info needed to (if needed) sell the knife: materials, dimension, any particular feature, etc. A picture is nice too.
 
Joss said:
I like a bill for insurance purposes, but I like that separately from the COA.
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Reasonable point, but for me, that's two pieces of paper that I have an opportunity to misplace instead of one.

Roger
 
J. & Tess Neilson include a nice certificate on the back of a business card encased in plastic with each knife. Its small, does not take up much room and can be kept with the knife in the zippered case that came with my knife. The certificate includes style of the knife, a description of the blade, hardware, handle materials, sheath, and selling price.

Paul
 
In my opinion the owners (first user/collector) should be named as well as sequential owners there after. Also, I believe the certificate should have a photo and an embossed stamp/seal from the maker. As one of the main purposes for a certificate is to protect against counterfeiting.

I agree, counterfeiting isn't a wide spread problem right now, but it will be as custom knives values increase.
The counterfeiting of engines and drivetrains is a huge problem in classic cars, especially in classic Corvettes.

These embossed stamps/seals with the maker's name are the same as what corporations use to stamp official documents and can be purchased from most office supply stores and are not very expensive.
 
If someone counterfeited the knife from a top maker, wouldn't they counterfeit his certificate as well, with fake names?

EDITED TO ADD:
The certificate should probably have a serial number though so that both the buyer and maker would have a way of authenticating the item over the phone, but even that's iffy if someone else, like a crook, has seen the certificate and got the number from it somehow.
 
RWS said:
If someone counterfeited the knife from a top maker, wouldn't they counterfeit his certificate as well, with fake names?
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That's the purpose of the embossed seal identifying the maker. These seal's official use is to keep counterfeiters from forging official corporate documents and stock certificates. Every business has to get one as part of becoming Incorporated.

Jerry uses ones on his certificates.
 
I am all for a certificate with price,materials If ordered that date and the build date as much info as possible but then again I would probale loose it.
 
Kevin Jones said:
That's the purpose of the embossed seal identifying the maker. These seal's official use is to keep counterfeiters from forging official corporate documents and stock certificates. Every business has to get one as part of becoming Incorporated.

Jerry uses ones on his certificates.
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Yep, I gotta buncha of these seals here in the company from all the various subsidiaries our company has had, but I think a lot of jurisdictions no longer require using them and, if I recall correctly, they're pretty easy to get. All you need is the name of the corporation and the state and date of incorporation and I believe anyone can order them on the internet. Unless the buyer knows what the seal is suppose to look like, and in light of the fact that the real seal can be bought by anyone, I'm not sure how much that protects the buyer after all is said and done with respect to thwarting counterfeiting.
 
RWS said:
Yep, I gotta buncha of these seals here in the company from all the various subsidiaries our company has had, but I think a lot of jurisdictions no longer require using them and, if I recall correctly, they're pretty easy to get. All you need is the name of the corporation and the state and date of incorporation and I believe anyone can order them on the internet. Unless the buyer knows what the seal is suppose to look like, I'm not sure how much that protects the buyer after all is said and done.
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Yep. I figure it's just got to be easier to counterfeit a certificate than it is to counterfeit a knife. Can't see where this would be an impedment to a determined crook.

Roger
 
A guy with the skills to make a saleable counterfeit of a top maker's work is not going to find it ANY more difficult to make a passable counterfeit of a certificate, IMO. Or he could simply claim that the certificate is lost - which is something that would be true in the case of a great many legitimate sellers, anyway.

Roger
 
I prefer a COA with:

Knife Style (and name of the piece if maker designates), overall length, blade length, grind, blade material, handle material, guard/fittings/embellishment descriptors, made for______ and year. Also like a picture on COA and maker signature.

What I paid is between me and the maker. Prefer a receipt for insurance purposes.

Love the idea of the card in plastic case described in Paul's response but would like a full size COA also.
 
RogerP said:
A guy with the skills to make a saleable counterfeit of a top maker's work is not going to find it ANY more difficult to make a passable counterfeit of a certificate, IMO. Or he could simply claim that the certificate is lost - which is something that would be true in the case of a great many legitimate sellers, anyway.

Roger
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So I guess governments, financial institutions, education diplomas, birth certificates, engineered drawings have just been wasting time and money requiring these official documents to be stamped with an embossed seals for the last 75 years or so when they can be so easily counterfeited. :confused:
 
The reason that I like certificates is that they provide provenance. I don't think of them as a deterrent against the unscrupulous actions of dishonest people.
 
What birth certificates and education diplomas have to do with counterfeiting knives escapes me. But yes, fake birth certificates and fake diplomas are pretty common - we do live in an age of Photoshop and inexpensive colour printers. This wasn't the case 75 years ago.

Certificates of authenticity are good for many reasons, but I am not of the view that they represent any meaningful deterrent to counterfeiting knives.

Heck, for that matter, I am not even of the view that counterfeiting custom knives is that prevalent a problem.

Point is that a guy who wants to pass off a counterfeit knife can likely fake-up a reasonable representation of the certificate. Remember the buyer would have to know that the knife came with a certificate in the first place, and know what a real one looked like in order for this to present any kind of a problem for our crook. The type of buyer who would have this knowledge would also be the type of buyer to spot the knife as a fake in the first place. This type of buyer is NOT our crook's mark. The certificate presents no real deterrent.

The second problem is that lost certificates are quite common. You see this a lot with sales of collectible watches. Most are advertised as being sold with "box and papers" - original packaging and paperwork. A very significant percentage, however, have no papers to accompany the watch. This COULD mean that the watch is not authentic, but far more often, it means that the legitimate owner simply misplaced them somewhere along the way. Point is - the absence of a certificate won't make the fake knife unsaleable, simply because its absence is too plausibly explained. The certificate presents no real deterrent.

Roger
 
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