What are the 10 Commandments of Knife Collecting?

1. Buy what you like.
2. Educate other people about your knives. If they take an interest in knives, help them any way you can.
3. Have fun...it's a hobby, you should enjoy it.
4. Buy the highest quality knife you can afford.
5. Buy from reputable companies.
6. When you get a knife that is very good/bad, tell all the other knife dorks out there about it.
7. Don't sell you car to by some insanely expensive knife.
8. Take good care of the knives you own.
9. Learn how to use a knife safely and responsibly.
10. Always carry at least 1 knife at all times.
 
You have to hold knives and work with them for a while before you begin to know what works and does not work for your hand and use style. After doing this for a while with a wide variety of knives, two things occur:

1. You begin to become more focused on various sub-genera (survival, utility, hunting, fighting, cooking, etc) or makers. Your collection interests become more refined

2. You begin to know by immediate look and feel what will and won't work for you in a user. It becomes easier to know from looking, or at least a quick feel, what will work for you. You can, from experience, begin to reject outright knives that won't fall into your comfort zone.

I agree with many of you that the initial "buy anything you can or feel like" stage is sometimes necessary as an educational experience.

The above applies to users at least. I can't speak for collecting pure art or collecting for collecting's sake. I use what I buy, so that's all I know.
 
Magnum's motto (esteemed moderator of rec.guns): Buy 'em all -- and never sell one! I have sold musical instruments and I regret every one. I'll doubt I'll ever sell another one or a gun or knife. Giving them away is not necessarily bad, though, if they go to a good home....

I like Paracelsus's commandment not to steal to get money to buy a knife -- but then ElectricZombie posted "Don't sell you car to by some insanely expensive knife." I don't know ... isn't that a little extreme?
 
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