User or safe queen?

To each his own but I don’t have any safe queens. I carry all of my knives. There are one or two that I baby more than others though. That’s the best part for me. I do appreciate others pristine collections and always admire the magnificent collections here.
 
For most of my life I was in the user camp. However over the past couple of years I have accumulated a fair number of laguioles. I use a few of them, but it would be silly to make all of them users, so most have remained safe queens.

That said, I've somehow lost a couple of GECs over the past year. One was a user, the other a safe queen. Though the safe queen was the more "valuable"knife, losing the user that I carried for a decade hurt more.
 
I don't have any safe queens. I only had one knife that I didn't use from brand new, so I sent it to a friend. I like the looks of a knife with some character and honest use. But that's just me, I understand some people like to have them immaculate and cherish them pristine.
 
I have no safe queens,even a vintage knife mint in the box that I payed a collectors premium for will be used.
There are times where I get a knife that's so nice looking in it's new condition it has me a bit apprehensive about scratching it, but eventually I get over that eventually.
I do prefer knives that only get better with age and don't show scratches so boldly, but it's not something you can find in every knife.

SS blades and polished NS bolsters do not age very gracefully, but it's easy to forget this when it's the only option on a knif you really want so you buy it anyways
I'd rather have Carbon steel and brass because it ages so well, but I can live with SS & polished NS which does look really nice when it's brand new.
 
I get attached to certain users,I'm a creature of habit,I end up enjoying the heck out of 4 or 5 and end up sidestepping so many.but I don't have many I haven't carried,they don't get hard use, but my work knives usually stay the same.one knife I put in my pocket every single morning is the 68 stag.i don't even know it's there.
 
This is when I say:

I've never met a knife that was too good to use, but I've met a few that were too good not to!

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All mine are users.
They were made to be used, so why insinuate to the person that made the knife you don't trust his/her work, so never use it, potentially insulting and offending him or her?

Besides ... I don't own a safe ...
 
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I don't use the really old ones that have survived this long in good shape. Wouldn't call myself a collector, but have picked up a few that fit this description. I feel like they ended up in my care instead of being used and abused.
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Anything else is fair game. One exception is a really nice S&M I got from G2.... I don't want to beat it up and for some reason I can't bring myself to actually pocket it. Strange, I know. It's too nice to use. Lol!
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You all (youse, y'all, yinz) have seen plenty of my users in the daily threads. For the most part I've come to enjoy beating up on A Wright and Case knives with a nice mixture of a lot of others sprinkled in there!
 
joeradza said:
Hyesouljah Hyesouljah Peter do you ever backtrack and clean up that user? For example, the stag toothpick I posted is like a little kid playing outside. When it gets too messy for me it gets a good flitzing and oiling and we start all over.
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I have never cleaned up any of my users. I personally really enjoy patinas and how they look and especially the fact that they protect the blade. I have considered flitzing one of my users before but haven’t yet. I used to flitz the back spring and bolsters but I’ve stopped doing that as well.

Btw, I just noticed Ken Kaneki as your pfp lol
 
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