Overrun MS 532's discovered!

T

the pup

Joined
Mar 26, 1999
Messages
49
Here is a letter I sent Joe Houser at Buck on Feb 20th 01 - he hasn't had a chance to respond yet but I thought that the Buck community in general would be interested:

"Hey Joe!! Did you know that some of the 2000 Limited Edition BG42 532's have old Master Series blades?? YEP. With the "U" date marking and the words "Master Series" on the reverse of the tang! I am holding one in my hand right now in walnut. Checking to see how many others I have. I found out about this when another dealer offered me five of them saying that they were "the only ones that had surfaced" in his having all his connections check their stash. He wants $125 apiece for 'em and I was almost ready to bite till I decided to check mine and the first box I opened had one! I have only three Limiteds here at home but I have ten more at the custom shop with Tom Stratton. I am gonna call him right now and see how many more I have. These would count, I think, as "overruns"!!!! WOW!!!"

The current "best we can figger" theory among my dealer buddies is that maybe at year-end 2000, as the Limited run drew to a close, Buck didn't want to go to the expense of making new blades for that project and so they scrounged around and found a small quantity of overruns from '98. It must have been a very small number indeed! Ask around, y'all, and let's see how many we can find, what kind of total numbers we are talking about. The seller who tipped me to this has 'em in each of the three handle materials, all purchased late in the year.

Best,
Billy 'the pup' Cochrane
www.vintageknives.com

[This message has been edited by the pup (edited 02-22-2001).]
 
I think the project came about because they had so many blades left over, not the other way around.

The Master Series didn't take off like they had hoped and, at the end of 1998, there were a lot of parts left over. That's where the "overrun" 192's, 119's and 110's came from. (These were some of the best knives Buck ever made BTW.)

Instead of doing the same thing with the 532's they jusd made a limited edition project for Y2K.

I have several in stock and they have the same markings.

------------------
Dennis Wright
Wright Knife & Sporting Goods
La Mesa, CA
1-800-400-1980
wrightknife@ixpres.com
("Have a knife day!")
 
Dennis if that construction were true, and certainly it sounds plausible, I would think that the Master Series marked blades would be in the majority. Have you seen more of the "U" date blades than not? If so I will bow to the evidence of numbers. What other sellers have been telling me as I e-mail around, though, is the opposite - that they have seen few if any of the MS marked 532's.

Best,
Billy
 
Another way of looking at this, whatever the origin of the Limited project was, is that with the other MS overruns (the 192, 119 & 110) they were sold AS overruns. Joe has posted on this board totals of under 250 per pattern on those (and in the case of the 192, under 100). In the case of leftover MS532 blades it appears they were mixed in with shipments of (presumably) many hundreds of non-MS marked blades, making it more likely they would be ignored, used, etc. Interesting!

the pup
 
Here is Joe's e-mail response to me, word-for-word:

"Billy,
You getting a little excited about this stuff eh? That's good, cause now I
don't stick out so much!
Here is the scoop on the 532's. We made the decision to use the ""left over"
532 master series blades on the new 532's for 2000. If you look at the 2000
catalogue, you will see that at least one of the three had a MS blade. One
has a blade from 1997 and one from 1994! We use whatever we have for the
catalogues photos. I wish I could tell you haw many were made using MS
blades but no one keeps those kinds of records. I would imagine that it is a
relatively small number.
I would not call those knives "overruns". Not that it really matters, they
are still collectable. I am not sure how such a knife would be classified.

Hope this helps,
Joe"
 
My NKCA Show 2000 532 has a blade from 1994 in it. All I can say is that it goes really well with the polished buffalo horn scales.
smile.gif
Thanks again Joe!


------------------
Dave Fortman

~Buck Collectors Club~
~Lifetime Member #736~
 
Hi Billy, I have 30 of these that were unopended until today!!! Had to open them
and out of all of them I just had one that
was the Master Series, it was the B532-BR-0
 
I checked my stock when I got back from Phoenix and found that all of the latest ones that I received have the year 2000 mark on the blade. All of the MS marked knives sold in the first bunch. Now I wish I had checked closer and kept a few.

I honestly don't know how many of the first order were marked MS because, when I saw the first couple, I just assumed that all of them were like that, the same as the other overruns that I had.

I just know, now, that they are all gone.
frown.gif


------------------
Dennis Wright
Wright Knife & Sporting Goods
La Mesa, CA
1-800-400-1980
wrightknife@ixpres.com
("Have a knife day!")
 
Gentlemen, I am pleased to let u know that out of plain luck, and amazingly after all these years, I bumped into one of the MS blade 532 in walnut inlay in Toronto last week. :D Got it for $139 CAD. A week ago I didn't even know Buck actually had this gorgeous model. The file work on its liner, slimness, blade shape really has that custom feel for a knife. :D I luv it!
 
I got three when they first came out in 2000. I sold one but still have two. One I sent to my buddy to have jigged bone and file work on the blade. The other I left stock. It's a real sweet knife.
Scott
Hey Pup just noticed you mentioned Tom Stratton. He's a good friend of mine who's doing the custom work on mine. You should see the 110's and 112 he's done for me. :D
 
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