Must be lucky

It is my impression that the southeastern US is the last stronghold for old time knife displays in hardware stores.

Here in California's San Joaquin Valley, real displays of traditional knives are few and far between. In my city (pop. 100,000) there are a few case knives in blister packs at the local Lowes. The True Value here in town used to have a decent display of Case knives, but I didn't see it the last time I was there.

I used to work in a smaller city of 25,000 just north of here, and they have a hardware store that has a display case with Case knives, as well as a full line of Tina horticultural knives. In this valley, agriculture is king, and that store shows it. They sell at least eight or ten different grape knives, and have a large rack with all kinds of pruning shears (different sizes and designs for grapes, fruit trees, etc).

About 45 miles north of me is a large outdoor/gun store that has a large knife selection. They have quite a few Case, Buck, and Böker, as well as Benchmade and Spyderco.

Andi - I would love to have a crack at some of the stores in your area. There are a few from Löwen, Otter, and Herder that I would pick up if I had the chance. I can get Böker and Eye Brand easily here, but those others are hard to find.
 
Here in the home of Case, (Pennsylvania), in my area the only places that may have a knife display left are the feed/farm stores. Even those have been slowly phasing out the Case displays in favor of other, less expensive brands. The few that still do have Case want quite a premium price over what I can pay online, even adding in shipping.

I always find it somewhat odd that in order to by a knife made in PA (Case, GEC, Queen, Schatt and Morgan) I'm usually ordering it from across the country, so it ships from their factories < 6 hours away from me, out to my dealer(s), then back to Pennsylvania.

Such is life in the 21st century. What saddens me the most is that many boys will never know the feeling of going to the local store and drooling over the pocket knifes in the display cases.
 
zippofan said:
What saddens me the most is that many boys will never know the feeling of going to the local store and drooling over the pocket knifes in the display cases.
Click to expand...

You said a mouthful there. Sad state of affairs indeed.

I was back in my hometown in Indiana last month, and James Hardware (where I used to stand and stare while dreaming of owning one of those knives) still has a Case display. I nearly bought a knife for my 19 year old son, since it was the place where I bought my first knife as a boy. I'll let him go in next time he visits my parents and do his own drooling and dreaming.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll pay the premium over the online price just so he can have a knife from the same store as some of mine. He absolutely loves his yeller peanut, and the one I nearly got him was an amber bone stockman. I'll let him pick.
 
Sadly, my best local store has a floor stand revolving display...It used to be almost entirely filled with Case knives...slowly they are changing it over to "other" brands...I seem to have better luck these days purchasing "pre-owned" knives...
 
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