I see that there is some interest in the old carbon bone handled knives. I have attached a picture of a display case which was used during the 50 tys. I especially like this particular case since as a kid I used to go into a candy/sporting goods store about a block from where I lived in Walden. The front was a candy store with a marble soda fountain and one pinball machine. The back had a small sporting goods section mostly with fishing stuff. They also had one of these cases filled with Schrades that I used to drool over. The couple who owned and ran the little place were Bill and Helen. He drove a woody station wagon and loved to hunt and fish. For a dollar I could get a malted ( they called them a London Fog ), a bag of candy, fishooks and a dauber. and still get change for the pinball. The trouble was you had to cut lawns all day in July with a manual ( push ) lawnmower to get the dollar. Oh yea the lime rickeys in a tall frosted glass were pretty good also. By the way some of the best smallmouth fishing anywhere is still the Wallkill river which was by chance also about a block away.
The knives in this picture are all under the Schrade Walden tang which was used from 46 until around 72. However all of these examples in real bone, Celluloid, or pearl and would have been made around or prior to 1960. These materials were not used after that period however Schrade is now making them in bone again due to a lot of peoples preference for this material. This group is rather nice since just about all the knives are New Old stock. That means that they are around 50 years old (average) and have never been used. Also all of these knives are in the original CARBON steel which was preferred then. ( I have not looked at this group for a while one of the smaller gents knives may be stainless I don't remember ).
As you look at the picture the top left is a pristene 1250 in jigged bone, the two large knives that are to the right are a 2-OT Old Timer in real smoothbone the next is a 8-OT in real smooth bone the only two Old timer patterns ever made in real smooth bone. (and only for a short time) there is another 2-OT in jigged bone ( forth from left on bottom ) very rare some people do not believe they exist. A lot of the rest are patterns still made however not in these materials or carbon steel.
As you look at these and say how old is this guy? I will tell you of a story that happened only last week the village historian who is about 25 years older than me ( from Walden ) was at my house in fact we were researching some little known piece of the past that the chances are no one else in the world gives a SH-- I mean gives a darn about. As he looked over some knives he pointed at a nice Schrade cut and asked what that was worth when I told him that it might fetch a couple of hundred dollars or more he looked at me and said that when he was a kid he could buy that model at the local hardware store for 75 cents but most of them were a quarter. The knife company would sell there seconds (blems) to the local hardware stores for a dime. I guess that proves that everything is relative to when and where and also never throw anything out. Enjoy the pic, and thankyou for the nice things that have been said lately. If there is an interest, in the future, I will take some pics of the Schrade cuts in the original 1903 case. Actually I enjoy sharing these artifacts and there history as you can obviously tell. LT
. I wonder if they were done for Wal-Mart only? 