Mutant Mariner

[recoil]

I thought I was pretty much up on Spyderco history until this week when I purchased a Mariner sight-unseen.

I expected an old style. no-drying vents, plain edge Mariner to replace one I recently traded, however, when I opened the box I was surprised to find that this Mariner did not say MARINER on the blade and one scale was twice as thick as the other, similar to that found on the original workers. The blade has the common Spyderco-USA and Seki-Japan stampings. One other odd feature is that the lanyard hole is about half the diameter of other old mariners.

A friend with more Spyder knowledge then me suggested that this may be a rarely seen variant known as the Para-Mariner.

Any other spydie experts ever see one of these?



thanks
dave

 

[jyork]

Hey Recoil-
Join the club. I have one just like that. Sal even mentioned once when I asked "it was like a pre- mariner." He actually had a name for it but I can't recall off the top of my head, I'll look for it. Good deal!
Jyork

I FOUND IT!!!!

Quote from Sal
"There were also two versions of the Mariner. For a while, the model marked "Mariner" was made with AUS-8 for corrossion resistant advantages and an "unmarked" version was sold as the "Paramedic". The unmarked version was maded with Gin-1 as was the original run of Mariners, favoring edge retention. There were only about 500 of the unmarked "Paramedic" version. Then we decided that the Gin-1 was preferred and dropped the AUS-8 version. As I remember, these unmarked versions had the old squared off scales, before we began the chamfered version."

 

[NCBlades]

I had one like that but foolishly sold it There was one on Ebay the other day that was like that one. I should have bought it.
michael

 

[recoil]

jyork,

Thanks for the excellent info, this is the first I have seen or heard of this model, I guess I'll have to make room for it in the display case.

Thanks again
dave