"Schrade Whaling knife 12796"

rprocter

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i just purchased (ebay) an older, used Schrade knife with a black sheath, described as above.
the pic. is poor quality. all i can make out is what looks like a 25OT with scrimshaw (of 2 whales ?) ivory delrin handles. i have searched here for 2 hours now and cannot find this knife. any help here as which series and year ? thanks. roland
 
thanks Rusty, that is the knife ! 260SC from 1975, only 1000 made ! and $25 in 1975, or $18.27 on ebay yesterday ! wow, what a lucky score ! what i thought might be whales in the seller's pic. are actually the eagle's wings. it even has the original sheath with the pigskin like texture.
i had reviewed the Schrade flyers but quit before 1975 because i thought the scrimshaws started in 1978. lucky me; 1 of 1000 ! roland
 
hope you enjoy the knife, good catch for $18.27, complete with the sheath, not many bargains like that these days.

Rusty1
 
I got one of those myself about 2 weeks ago for around $20. Nice knife, you will like it. I was really surprised I got it so cheap.
 
interesting how months go by without seeing a certain knife, then within days or weeks, quite a few appear. and mine looks lightly used, so it's not the "warehouse find" situation.
most regular 25OTs i see go well above $20, yet v. little bidding on these 2.
Schradites sleeping ? roland
 
my 260SC arrived, and yes it is the same knife as shown in the above link "Schrade Scrimshaw 1975". the black sheath is the plain(not dimpled) one.
certainly never sharpened and i think never used, just some tarnih from living 33 years in a sheath. what a deal for $18 !!
my question is about the serial #12786. there were 1000 produced, so how can this serial # be interpreted ? roland
pearlknife112.jpg

pearlknife113.jpg

pearlknife115.jpg
 
Roland, it was 1000 dozen (or 12,000) knives produced. They always counted knives in the dozens for retailers, and they rarely produced less than 10,000 knives for the limited editions. With some overuns for errors, scratches,returns, etc, the numbers often went over the actual production numbers. ( Or they used the same system they used on the Kentucky Rifle knives;):D ) That one's in great condition!

Eric
 
Thanks Eric. well 12000 is a lot more than 1000, but to me it feels like quite a special knife, and the condition is very good. it's a keeper. roland
 
Actually, one thousand dozen of a limited edition is not that many. Given the age of the knife and how many have been lost or destroyed, or became users in the past 33 years, I would be surprised if even half have survived in good condition.

Remember that in the early to mid 1970's, there were really very few people collecting knives. And most of the ones who were concentrated on what were at the time antique knives, not newly made knives. So antique knives in that era were pre-WWII at the latest.

Modern knife collecting as we know it did not exist then, and it was through the efforts of promoters of the hobby (Russell, Parker, Price, Voyles etc.) and eventually the cutleries themselves who saw a new developing market that the hobby has grown to be what we see today.

Your knife was an early product of the creative imagination of Frank Giorgianni and the Baers. It was a forerunner of what became a long line of limited editions made especially for collectors. And as an early issue, is one of the "keys" to anyone trying to assemble a complete Schrade Scrimshaw collection. Congrats on a great find!

Michael
 
Roland,
I see your knife is different from mine. The tang stamp on mine says it's a "Schrade/USA 25OT", and the scales on mine are not flat. They are the fatter scales that bulge out from the bolsters. However, the scrimshaws are the same, both front and back. So would this indicate they were made in different years? Why the differences with the same scrimshaw?

Dave
 
Dave, maybe the stock of handle material was thicker on your knife and the hafting was more evident, I think Roland's knife may have some angle on the haft which does not show up in the pictures above. saving the thickness of stock material also may of come into play, without some hafting the handle material would be really thin from bolster to bolster, JMO

Rusty1
 
Dave, the thickness of mine measured at center handle pins is just a slight hair under 3/4". it's quite hefty.
so your knife is a scrimshaw with "regular" pattern number ? i thought the scrimshaws "all"(dangerous assumption, i know) had #s with SC.
does yours have a serial # ? can you post pics ? roland
 
Roland,
I apologize for the poor pics, my scanner has issues, or rather, I think I have operator issue with it. Don't know how to adjust the depth of field to be able to read the tang stamp, which does indeed read "25OT". I had thought the same as you, but I think I have an LB7 scrim with an LB7 tang stamp, and I know I have an LB1SC rather than the 511SC most are stamped with.

Mine measures right at 3/4" at the center bolster. I scanned a pic of it from the bottom so you can see how the scales bulge out. And it has serial number 01945 on the bolster.

Dave
 

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I think 1,000 dozen is far too many. My contention that is exactly the problem with Schrade, Boker, and several others that nearly put the entire commemorative business in the pits. If you look at the biggest failures of limited edition knives to appreciate for years, the long runs are the problem.

In the early days Schrade would do a factory order, but it had to be 5,000 knife minimum--which was almost an industry standard minimum. However that number was not determined by market conditions--but by a nice economic number for a factory run. It was simply ignorance of the collector market when a factory would require a customer who wanted something unique to buy 5000 of something when all he wanted was a different color handle (and at a higher price to boot!) But that is the way those of us seeking special factory order knives were treated by the big boys.

Case was just as bad. I got a good lesson in that when in the late 70's I was talking to a friend at Case who mentioned that their annual production for a made for consumer bone handled Scout knife that year was under 4000. There were other patterns in the same range for regular production. That was around the same time Schrade was doing 10-12,000 knife runs. This was around the same time Case had issued 20,000 Moby Dick folding hunters (they did preface the serial numbers with 5000 with a C prefix, etc. with A, S, and E prefixes). That knife cost $100 dealer, $200 retail, and will still not bring over $135.00 at a knife show, 30 years later.

Boker did the same oversupply thing with their 1976 Centennial Spirit of America sets, and even the National Knife Collectors Association blew it with their 1980 club knife in a 12,000 knife run. That year marked the beginning of the demise of NKCA club knives appreciating every year.

Most of those companies learned, but Schrade insisted on keeping those big numbers, and when you consider that anyone in the knife game buying in volume paid 50% off less 25% off it is only since the manufacturing demise that that have started to take off. Take the Liberty Bell, Paul Revere, and Minuteman for instance. Those were long runs, retail was $25.00 as I recall, dealer was $12.50, distributor cost was $10.00 and change. (I may be off on the actual retail price but those were the discounts). Issued in 1976. Into the early 90's I was able to buy and sell those knives in the $7-8 range.

I know this group loves Schrade knives, but having been around in the early days of knife collecting I can say that Schrade has only come into its own as a collectible in the last 5 years or so, and in the early days were not considered as anything worth keeping in the commemorative line because what they called a limited edition was nothing more than a overpriced production run with the work "limited" or "collector" on it somewhere.

I have heard it said during that time that any knife that said "made for collectors"---wasn't.

I personally consider the way Schrade ran their limited edition program nothing more than looting and pillaging the knife community and at the time they did far more damage to knife collecting than helped.

The knives they made during that time have only within the past few years found their bottom and finally started to appreciate.
 
And soooo that being said what about us newer,to collecting, folks we have the advantage? "NOT" just because you got "LOOTING" looted because of ,maybe some short sitghtedness, and now because of the demise of Schrade and the knives being more collectible people that have invested with hopes of appreciation have seen that hope come to fruition. No ill will toward you TennKnifeman but is your reply cause you ain't makin a furtune? I personally love the knives and any monatary gain is just icing on the CAKE!!!
 
DaveT63, i think the thickness is the same. you have a great knife; very low serial #. roland
 
TennKnifeman, i am a novice here, but i think that all Schrade U.S.A. ('73-"04) knives in V.G. or better condition will appreciate, much the way original Remington knives have. both, i believe, produced well made working knives, priced in their time to be affordable by most. both also reflect eras of USA life that is forever past.
i am interested in hearing your thoughts on this. thank you, roland
 
And soooo that being said what about us newer,to collecting, folks we have the advantage? "NOT" just because you got "LOOTING" looted because of ,maybe some short sitghtedness, and now because of the demise of Schrade and the knives being more collectible people that have invested with hopes of appreciation have seen that hope come to fruition. No ill will toward you TennKnifeman but is your reply cause you ain't makin a furtune? I personally love the knives and any monatary gain is just icing on the CAKE!!!


Newer collectors for certain have the advantage today, because the prices have stabilized, rather than the ups and downs (and losses) that the collectors in the industry in the early days suffered. If you collect Schrades now is the ideal time to be getting in.

Please read what I said-- I said a run of 12,000 was too many then. It is too many now. A regular production run for some patterns in those days was 4000 or less, but because their knives said "collector" on them they were overpriced and overproduced, to the detriment of themselves, and to knife collecting in general.

Schrade in those days did the looting among the collectors by overproducing and overpricing the knives in comparisons to what they could have done. The long term effects were devastating to Schrade itself in my opinion. Instead of producing 12,000 knives the way they did, they could have changed a few handles, made fewer knives but a wider variety, and helped the knife business grow. The way Case handles their collectors today is a prime example how it COULD have been done. Case offers a nice newsletter, tour events, a wide variety of knives in lower quantities, and a very nice collector's event every other year in Bradford (not to mention a darn nice Case museum).

Instead Schrade went for the quick buck. And the knife business saw more than a few new collectors buy those knives at full retail, or dealer price, and watched their investment 20 years tank quicker than stock in Enron. And because of that they stopped collecting knives and started collecting something else.

Other companies kept their numbers down, started on shoestrings, and became major forces in the game. Fightn' Rooster, Bulldog first generation, Case Classics, Schatt & Morgan, Taylor Cutlery, and dozens of others got their start by keeping the quantities low and watching the collectors flock to them. In the early days that money could have gone to Schrade, they were in on the ground floor of the whole thing with the Kentucky Rifle, Kentucky Colonel, and Parker Eagle Set. But they didn't react and cut back quantities once the market became saturated.

If you only collect to please yourself that's ok, that's a true collector--but there aren't many of you out there. Most of us if we pay $30.00 for a collectible prefer it to be worth more at some point in the future, or at least worth our original $30.00 some 20 years down the road. It is a ego thing too. If I buy well, I feel bright rather than stupid. I've done both and I much prefer feeling bright.

I like seeing the knives I buy go up, and I do not enjoy them going down. It is very simple--if knife prices go up, more people are interested. The value of the knives you already own increases. Your net worth rises. Knife collecting expands. This is not a bad thing. A growing knife market with active and eager participants helps prevent the failure of factories like Schrade and Camillus.

Uncle Henry once described this to me as "our little business". And it is. I would much prefer it to be bigger, more vibrant, more active, with thousands of people crowding every knife show and event.

Let me say this more to the point.

It is my opinion if in the 70's and 80's Schrade had done more listening to the knife collector market and adapting to what the "market" needed rather than listening to what some suits in New York City that came to a knife show once a year, walked through without listening to to anyone, then went back to New York and did what they "thought" we needed, I believe there would still be a working Schrade factory in Ellenville cranking out knives.

I have made it my life's work to study the cutlery industry as an author, editor, publisher, dealer, auctioneer, and collector. I have no frustration about making or not making a fortune, I've been able to work in knives full time for those 30 years. I have no complaints.
 
Two really incisive educational posts Bruce which should be indelibly etched in our 'collector' brains.As a former coin collector I have watched 'the goose that laid the golden egg' destroyed by over production exactly as you describe.
It has taken 4 years and the demise of the Company to see material gains on Schrade items that languished..nay lost ground..over previous 30 years.
The GDOT 4 knife series of 74/75 are the classic example of above. Beautifully well made,embellishments the regular production series didnt have,well boxed etc however too many produced for an investment/ collector knife..from memory 9216 for the Sharpfinger through to average 15000 for the other 3 in series.It has taken some 34 years for them to modestly appreciate and only because most have now been squirrelled away since Company demise so laws of supply and demand take over with prices.
You will need the wisdom of Soloman mate to attempt to interpret a realistic collector value to all Schrade stock in your upcoming book. I personally wouldnt attempt it I would just give the production numbers description and associated history as you will likely be creating pseudo benchmarks. Look how many Schrade collectors still refer to Jim Sargents 2nd Edition and refer to the pricing and that was printed in the 80's.
You have a daunting task because it will undoubtedly become the contemporary Schrade reference manual post 2004.Your book will also in itself create more Schrade Collector interest thereby raising the values people are prepared to pay to own examples in your book.
You sound like you have the experience to interpret all the above market forces and write a most successful Schrade book I only hope you are not forced to follow "others" Commercial Agendas and I think I may be expressing a collective Schrade Forum hope.
2 Great posts!..may there be many more...... Hoo Roo

GDOT 70 th Anniversary Series. Production Numbers.Recommended Issue Prices US $25.
GDOT-1 19,833 in 74 &75.
GDOT-2 15,215 in 75,76 & 77.
GDB-1 12,000 in 75,76 & 78
152GDOT 9,216 in 75 & 77.
 
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