Old Spyderco Police Stainless Steel - Authentic?

Chariotz4 · Sep 7, 2016

My dad's birthday is coming up in October, and as a student without a whole lot of money, I was thinking that I'd just fix up and re-condition one of his old knives and re-gift it to him. It'll be a win-win as I won't be spending (a lot) of money that I don't really have, and he'll get a knife that's usable again (he's really hard on his knives/tools and doesn't really do much to maintain them)! Anyways, to the more relevant info, I decided to work on his old Spyderco Police Stainless Steel model with the SpyderEdge. However, upon looking at the knife up close for the first time in a long time, I wasn't sure if it's a genuine Spyderco blade so I thought I'd post here to see if I could get some answers seeing as I know pretty much squat about this kind of stuff. One thing that struck me was that the Spyderco logo was noticeably absent anywhere on the knife (including the pocket clip). I'm (obviously) hoping that I'm wrong and it is a genuine Spyderco Police so that I can enquire on the site about getting some replacement screws for the pocket clip...

The Deacon · Sep 7, 2016

Looks legit to me. Nobody was counterfeiting knives back in the mid-90's and I really doubt anyone would bother counterfeiting a GIN-1 Police today, or bother engraving one. Spyderco didn't start putting the "bug" logo on blades till around 2005, your dad's knife is probably ten years older than that. Bugs on clips started a bit earlier, but again, later than your knife.

Chariotz4 · Sep 7, 2016

The Deacon said:
Looks legit to me. Nobody was counterfeiting knives back in the mid-90's and I really doubt anyone would bother counterfeiting a GIN-1 Police today, or bother engraving one. Spyderco didn't start putting the "bug" logo on blades till around 2005, your dad's knife is probably ten years older than that. Bugs on clips started a bit earlier, but again, later than your knife.

Good to know! Just curious, what does the stamping "GIN-1" mean? Also, as for the engraving, my dad won the knife at an IPSC competition in the law enforcement division (which was another reason that I wasn't sure about the authenticity of the knife; no one in the family actually bought the knife from a retailer).

yablanowitz · Sep 7, 2016

Chariotz4 said:
Good to know! Just curious, what does the stamping "GIN-1" mean? Also, as for the engraving, my dad won the knife at an IPSC competition in the law enforcement division (which was another reason that I wasn't sure about the authenticity of the knife; no one in the family actually bought the knife from a retailer).

The stamp stands for Gingami-1 steel, the steel that Spyderco built their reputation on. Yours (or your Dad's) looks to be in better shape than a lot of the ones I've picked up over the years.

TDOG1 · Sep 7, 2016

Gin-1 is the steel used in the blade. It's a early, good quality Japanese stainless. You can do a search for in-depth info regarding the steel. This knife looks to be in good shape. Certainly wouldn't call it abused for it's age. Could be sharpened up quickly with the Sharpmaker and with a bit little Flitz polish would look great. You can contact Spyderco for replacement screws. Hopefully the threads the handles aren't stripped. Some Loc-tite and you're good to go. Probably would bring some good memories back to your dad.

Chariotz4 · Sep 7, 2016

yablanowitz said:
The stamp stands for Gingami-1 steel, the steel that Spyderco built their reputation on. Yours (or your Dad's) looks to be in better shape than a lot of the ones I've picked up over the years.

I knew I was posting in the Spyderco subforum, but man, that's A LOT of Spydercos, and all of the same model! I can't imagine how many other models of Spyders you have...:thumbup:

Chariotz4 · Sep 7, 2016

TDOG1 said:
Gin-1 is the steel used in the blade. It's a early, good quality Japanese stainless. You can do a search for in-depth info regarding the steel. This knife looks to be in good shape. Certainly wouldn't call it abused for it's age. Could be sharpened up quickly with the Sharpmaker and with a bit little Flitz polish would look great. You can contact Spyderco for replacement screws. Hopefully the threads the handles aren't stripped. Some Loc-tite and you're good to go. Probably would bring some good memories back to your dad.

Thanks for the info, and that's exactly what I'm planning on!

:thumbup: