The fact that a high end knife is purchased by the masses is not that big a mystery. The money spent on one of these knifes is, after all, not like buying a Mercedes, or a new home, a $10,000 Rolex watch, or $15,000 home entertainment center. You can argue that $400 or whatever is a lot to spend for a knife, but in actuality, it's not a lot of money in absolute terms. Most people have $400. We spend that amount on crap all the time. It's just that since there are regiments of knives, a lot of them very good stuff, for less money it seems like a lot.
One of the posters makes a very good point regarding how we keep buying knives. Unless we're collectors it's because none of the knives we've bought quite do the job. A case in point is with fillet knives. I spent decades poking my nose into knife shops, reading every outdoor catalogue I came across, and over time buying about a dozen filet knives. The proof they weren't very good, and the inventory included Remington, Case, Buck, Gerber, Shrade, Kershaw, Dexter-Russel, and others, is because I went right on shopping.
I purchased a Phil Wilson in S90V, for what might be considered an obscene amount of money (Not in abosulute terms of course. In that sense it's chicken feed). And guess what, I'm no longer pawing through stores looking for a filet knife. I don't even think about it anymore. It does everything I had been chasing. So if you like shopping, and you're not a collector, don't buy the good stuff, because that will end it.
