What makes a knife collectable?

neeman said:
How does using a custom affect its resell price?
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Pricing and collectability are independent variables. You can never know for sure where the pricing is going to go. What is valuable and desirable today can become just another rusty old knife tomorrow. Pricing depends on collector demand, which in turn depends on broad collector awareness and interests. A few well researched and interesting books on the subject, and even those Franklin Mint knives, can become highly prized items. Witness the crazy fad over Pound Puppies a few years back - quality, usefullness, rarity, etc. were woven into the story, but had little intrinsic or lasting properties. The same can be said with any numbers of knife makers, who have hyped their tactical, special forces, magical, knife-fu-ninja-assassin-super-knives, only to be discovered as frauds; their knives often transformed from wonderkin to sad jokes in the minds of collectors.

Collectibility, on the other hand, depends on whatever drives the collector. We all seem to have a narrative, or several, that runs around in our head, that defines some association between the various items in our collection. Indeed the expression of this thought in a well presented collection may be more interesting and attractive then the properties of the individual items in the collection. An old bottle cap can be nearly worthless, yet an ordered collection of thousands of them can help to tell the story of an industry, or help someone to relive their youth; in short it can become very attractive, informative, and valuable; due to the work invested in assembling, organizing, and presenting the collection.

Even items that seem undesirable of themselves, can become important component of a collection. It may be a lousy knife-like thing, primarily sold to kids from the back pages comic books; but, those bubble pommeled $3 survival knives were once desirable to me when I was attempting to build a nice collection of Survival Knives (which included many examples from Lyle, Brend, Randall, England, and others). It was something which added to the completeness of a collection of "1970-80 vintage survival knives". Then again, after a decade of work on that collection, I felt it was fairly complete -so I sold and traded it off and started collecting in another direction. I guess that for me, a lot of the fun comes from the hunt, from the people you meet along the way, from the places you visit and enjoy on your self-determined quest.

n2s
 
Was it BRL that said when asked what determines if a knife is collectible ..."Ebay."

If I have attributed this to the wrong person let me know
 
Not quoting directly from the book, but I read in the new edition of Blades Guide to Knives, presumably this portion was written by Bernard Levine. Anyway, just because a knife is rare, doesn't mean that it will be collectible. If not that many collectors know about it, you're not going to get top dollar for it.

A shame that everyone knows that Remington and Winchesters from the 30's are of exceptional quality ;).
 
I like going after the rare ones.Not really collectible, but old and good quality.You can find them fairly inexpensive.
 
I don't really collect knives but rather amass a few that catch my fancy....funny thing though, many that do catch my eye carry a pricey, price point to obtain! This tells me a whole lot of people also like the particular knife as well as I do (more if its an auction and they outbid me:D) Seems like for a particular model to become desirable to a larger body of prospective buyers the manufacturer needs to hit the "perfect storm" with regards to scale material, steel type, and blade configuration for a particular pattern. Sometimes this "perfect storm" knives are via SFO runs as they develop a kinda cult following. Creating a "supply/demand" scenario will keep an objects value stable as long as demand/desireability outstrips supply/availability. Just my .02:eek:
 
neeman said:
Will GEC make a collectors market with just 50 serial #s of each knife?
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Interesting point about GECs, especially since many times the number of serialized knives is actually the whole run. Worse yet, sometimes they make the first 50 with serial numbers, then only 4 or 5 more without numbers. Which of these will be worth more down the line? Anybody's guess.

The best situation for collectors would be to make the first 50 with numbers, then make another 500 or so without. Then the first 50 would be worth a premium, BUT . . . it would have to be something enough people would appreciate down through the years anyway, and you'd have to be an exceptional judge to pick those more often than not.

In the end, I buy the lowest serial numbers I can find, of the ones I like, and hope for the best. I'm not really planning to sell them, or make money off them, but it's nice to think they would increase in value.
 
Just how many people want the knife, A case knife that is only 2 or 3 years old can be as collectable as one 100 years old if it is rare enough and collectors want it.
I belive where the knife was made make A big difference as well.
American and German made knives as A rule are the most collected and case is the most collected of all knives but I'm not sure that they are the best made.
I'm sure that most of the top 10 collected knives are American made, alot of the knife makers have most of there knives produced over seas but the ones they make here are the ones ever one wants and even if they look the same the American made will be worth much much more.
 
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