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What happened to these guys?
- Thread starter bladeboss
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2006
- Messages
- 666
Bladeboss, if I were you I'd find a couple of minty silver nights on an auction site and put them away. In a few years you'll probably appreciate them allot more than the brick like super steel pry bars that the internet expert ninja commando steel snobs esteem. The old Gerbers take a laser edge and are pocketable ....
And if you won't feel compelled to sing their praises to justify how much you spent on them.
And if you won't feel compelled to sing their praises to justify how much you spent on them.
The only thing I would say is, unless you have lots of extra money, never buy a knife unless it has a purpose. Even if it looks like the most beautiful thing in the world to you. If it has no place in the activities in your life, just pass on by.
Discussing good, and otherwise less than good, products is what this place is about. Be respectful of others, but don't be polically correct to the point where it stiffles the flow of information.
Gerber during the 80s was once an excellent brand for top of the line production knives. Their better production knives were selling at prices comparable to the lower end of the custom knives market. They along with brands like SOG, Al Mar, Cold Steel, Puma, Aitor, Spyderco and Pacific Cutlery (Benchmade) were competing with Buck, Schrade and Kabar and forcing the latter to embrace newer designs and materials; they were helping to make the production knife market far more colorful and appealing then it had been during the 70s.
Today, many new brands have stepped in and Gerber has moved on to producing cheap mass marketed products for distributors like Wal Mart.
n2s
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2001
- Messages
- 2,033
great post, on the money!
The first good knife I ever bought was a Gerber magnum folding hunter, bought new in 1980. Unfortunately it was also the last really good Gerber I ever bought.
I really love that knife, so much so that I won a bidding war on eBay to buy an identical one with a slightly shortened blade tip just so I could get an original replacement belt sheath and a 'donor' knife in case I ever need lock or scale replacement parts.
The last Gerber I remember buying was an AR 3.0 and it didn't strike me as being all that much better than the bucket of $5 knives on the counter at the gas station.
I really love that knife, so much so that I won a bidding war on eBay to buy an identical one with a slightly shortened blade tip just so I could get an original replacement belt sheath and a 'donor' knife in case I ever need lock or scale replacement parts.
The last Gerber I remember buying was an AR 3.0 and it didn't strike me as being all that much better than the bucket of $5 knives on the counter at the gas station.
Good post like A.G. said. In the pre-Fiskars days, Gerber was not what you would call a budget brand by any stretch of the imagination. IIRC, Cold Steel did not offer anything the you would call cheap either early on. If I thnk back to the early 80's, Al Mar was the top of the heap as far as production knives were concerned. If you wanted anything more exclusive, you were looking at buying a Randal, Ruana or an all out custom. Gerber was the next step down and sold as the premium brand at the big sporting goods stores like Oshmans. Remember that Al Mar was the chief designer at Gerber before he struck out on his own in 1979 to found what most consider to be the first high end specialty knife company, although our fellow forumite Mr. Russell may have some claim to a piece of that title. It was a darn good idea and others copied the business model and the rest, as they say, is history. I consider the real tipping point to be the late 80's and early 90's when the major players that we know today, Spyderco, Cold Steel, Pacific/Benchmade SOG, etc. started to dominate the display case at your local gun shop, mall cutlery store or Army-Navy store and the knife tables at the better gun shows.
The last Gerber I bought was a Gerber,Harsey Airframe folder with cast Titanium handle and 154CM blade.It was made in Oregon,retailed for $240,and the quality of that knife is excellent.Gerber did'nt make that model long as it was expensive for them to produce.They made some cheaper models of it for awhile though,not sure if they still do.I got it not long after reading an article about in Tactical Knives by the late great Chuck Karwan,who loved that knife.Had a friend whose sister worked for Gerber back then who got me a killer deal,less than half of retail price,awesome:thumbup:!That was some 12 years ago.I still have that knife and would'nt part with it.
It may have been just my imagination, but when I was a kid in the mid-70's / early 80's, Gerber was a little bit more "exclusive" than Buck, Cace etc. My grandfather worked for a store that sold everything from hand tools to major appliances and small tractors. This place sold Buck, so most of the men in my family had 110's. I remember my dad thinking highly of a Gerber lockback that belonged to his close friend, and asking where he bought it etc. I also remember lusting after the big fixed blades that would appear in Soldier of Fortune. This was way before the internet people, you had mail order or maybe you were lucky to live near a shop that specialized in selling cutlery.
Bladeboss you're doing it again, I thought you learned your lesson the first time when you got put in a certain thread, I've been quiet but it seems like everyday I see a new thread started by you and they are all very similar to this one, remeber read more post less. Don't wanna go back to that certain thread again...
I had an interesting conversation with a senior Gerber manager on a plane flight back from China.
Gerber sells things at a price that will generate the most sales so they can maximize profit. Today is a "throw-away" world that we live in, non-knife people buy & use sporting knives like anything else, with price, disposability & replaceability in mind. Others, buy sporting knives for collections, and/or will never use a knife beyond basic tasks. With this in mind, their products have to be designed & manufactured for the mass-market (Walmart) to survive. This is basic modern economics btw.
Being treated as a side-brand by Fiskars hasn't helped either.
Gerber sells things at a price that will generate the most sales so they can maximize profit. Today is a "throw-away" world that we live in, non-knife people buy & use sporting knives like anything else, with price, disposability & replaceability in mind. Others, buy sporting knives for collections, and/or will never use a knife beyond basic tasks. With this in mind, their products have to be designed & manufactured for the mass-market (Walmart) to survive. This is basic modern economics btw.
Being treated as a side-brand by Fiskars hasn't helped either.
How old is this "higher quality" Gerber of yours? A couple months? A couple years?
I think this is where the "learn(read) more, post less" may be coming from. I think the vast majority do not believe Gerber has depreciated in quality recently. The decline in Gerber quality happened years, if not decades, ago. How, why, and when that happened is certainly a topic that deserves to be discussed once in a while.
Maybe we have misread your statement and this Gerber of yours is older than you. Fill us in.
Actually I'm not saying anything about the brands, did you see me say anything in my posts about gerber?? Nope, I was posting a comment to the OP that's all he knows what I'm talking about, I've tried to help him out in the past and give him some pointers as he's rubbed some people the wrong way on here before.
powernoodle
Power Member
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2004
- Messages
- 11,951
If we stopped repeating ourselves, 90% of Bladeforums would disappear. And what fun would that be?
Hey, what do you guys think about Cold Steel? Does it suck? [joking!]