Not a title likely to elicit much of a response. Not really a very good question.
I will try though. Even the "lower end" steels can perform really well if heat treated correctly and carefully. As a general rule one should try to avoid the cliche "surgical stainless". That term means nothing and it could be a decent steel (highly unlikely) or it could be crappy or mediocre at best (this'll be the case about 99% of the time). Likewise "stainless steel" quoted as the material the blade is made of...avoid those. Here's why: Saying something is "stainless" does have meaning (unlike "surgical")...it must be composed of 15% or more chromium in the alloy. But that is all you know.
Good knives will specify what kind of steel with some sort of name. There is no naming convention. 1095 is yout classic carbon steel and is very good. VG-10 is a Japanese Stainless...very good. CPM S30V, S35V S90V...all high end American steels. D2 is a tool steel often used in knives. AUS-8 is a good stainless steel. 440C is a very good steel. 440A is kind of so-so in the minds of many people. "Rostfrei" is kind of generic term one sees on German, Swiss, and Austrian knives. The term itself just means the same as stainless. However, despite the fact that you don't know what the steel really is, most knives marked like this are pretty decent. 420HC is something Buck uses and does a fantastic job with. It was not a steel considered to be high end but they make it work with excellent heat treating and their hollow grind geometry...and can do so inexpensively. Sandvik is more of a brand name of Swedish steels and encompasses a range of specific alloys. All of the Sandvik cutlery steels are very good.
There are literally hundreds and hundreds of steels. So here's the trick. If you look at knives that actually specify what their blades are made of in real terms (440C), and in addition to that specify their Rockwell hardness (RC 58-60 for example) you should be OK. There you are probably looking at a knife made by a company that takes care enough to select a good steel in the first place and are not afraid of scaring you off because they assume that a subset of the buying public knows a little something about steel and those people tend to buy lots of knives so they want them to come back.
Make sense?
