What will become of your collection...when you are gone

I'd keep Trump or any political figure out of a discussion on the eventual disposal of knives or anything that we or others attach concentrated value to. The eventual disposal of knives as we age is an excellent justification to USE your knives. What does it really matter if a knife is worth less? You're dead. Who cares?

One thing I have noticed and of some concern to me is that older fixed blades are commonly not made with what we consider high end steel these days. As a result, the value or appeal is reduced unless the maker (as in custom or handmade stuff) is very well known and thought of. Ultimately, I don't see it mattering a whole lot in terms of "when you die".
 
colubrid said:
A problem is that none of us know when we are going to die. A young girl (16 ) who lives nearby just got killed in a car accident yesterday near my house. Another friend I know slipped in the kitchen and hit his head on the counter and was in a coma and died 2 weeks later.


Unless you are proactive now . You probably have not prepared anyone close to you as to the value of each knife.
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Very true. Im sorry about your friend.
 
colubrid said:
true , but you probably will have people that you love left behind that you care about and want them to get true value from the knives.
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Unless you're talking about really high end knives, I doubt the heirs or folks left behind will even care about knives. More important things to worry about.
 
I will either have to pare the collection down through sales or giveaway, or do a good job documenting what I have and what it might be worth and where it all could be sold. Otherwise the whole lot will either be taken by an interested relative, or thrown in the trash. At least, that's what I figure. I should have many decades to go before that.
 
colubrid said:
true , but you probably will have people that you love left behind that you care about and want them to get true value from the knives.
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There is no way for us to make that happen. Your family and friends know about your hobbies, if they had the slightest interest in realizing whatever you have invested in those hobbies they would have approached you with the concern. You can lead a horse to water.... But, there is no way to educate people who have been too lazy and disinterested to learn.

n2s
 
There was a massive estate auction near where I grew up, took two or three days to go through as I recall. They had originally intended to do it the standard way, two rings (well, two auction trucks) bulk lots, pile it up and sell it off. Thing is, the old guy had tagged damn near everything from the door knobs to the drill bits with little notes like "Borrowed from Pete K, 1967, don't return, he still has the lawn mower" and "Stolen from Mike T's truck, 1986, while cutting christmas trees for the church". Some were longer with little stories about how he got a thing, or where he'd bought it, who had given it to him. Some of the tags noted who it should be given to with no way to actually identify who he meant, just initials, or a nickname no one recognized. Since everyone wanted to hear what the tags read, it took forever! Higher end stuff had bigger stories, and from memory he had a pretty decent sized gun collection, though like most old Saskatchewan farmers, a lot were pretty well shot out and junked, so there were few that were fit for anything other than a museum, those all had stories, how many deer, moose or whatever had been shot with them. Almost certainly the whole thing was made up, and he'd done it over quite a few years, as to why, I have no idea, besides just having a great story for his family to tell, and I'm sure it netted them a tidy profit as locals who knew him were likely to bid just a little higher on an item with their names on it. Kinda a fun idea and I'm sure it kept him busy for the last few years of his life.

Either I'll see it coming and get a chance to decide, or I won't and it will be someone else's problem. I guess if my last BF post is just a list of GPS co-ords, you'll know which way it went!
 
not2sharp said:
There is no way for us to make that happen. Your family and friends know about your hobbies, if they had the slightest interest in realizing whatever you have invested in those hobbies they would have approached you with the concern. You can lead a horse to water.... But, there is no way to educate people who have been too lazy and disinterested to learn.

n2s
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ha ha! true! Maybe better to leave the knives to someone here who would be blessed by them.
 
I collect customs and I have no children so my my guess is someone will throw them away with everything else I own.
But honestly I don't care that much.
 
colubrid said:
true , but you probably will have people that you love left behind that you care about and want them to get true value from the knives.
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My value to them is so much more than knives. They can do whatever they choose to do with my collections of fireams, watches, knives, coins, etc., etc. Like I said, at that time I won't care. The time to give away things to family and friends is while you are alive. It will mean more to them once you croak.
 
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colubrid said:
ha ha! true! Maybe better to leave the knives to someone here who would be blessed by them.
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That actually is not a bad idea by the way. I don't know about you, but my knife knowledge is skewed toward the stuff I'm interested in and I know just enough to be dangerous about the other ones. That's especially true of better or more expensive knives. Expensive is a really relative term and when I use it here relative to estates, I'm referring to the $1000+ stuff mostly. Not2sharp used the word "disinterested" and that is a crucial description as to the foundation or lack of foundation of knowledge.

As Leghog said, the time to dispose of things that hold special value to you such as collections is before you die. That way the person receiving it is more apt to appreciate the fact that YOU attach a lot of value on it. There is this little mental block about "just giving things away" for me.... There lies the problem for me making much effort to dispose of my hobby accumulations before I'm too sick to care or die. It's something to ponder certainly. I don't have an answer at the moment. I think the auction approach is a good one as it nets some money to the estate or heirs and deals with what many might consider a big pain in the butt as far as dealing with it. People understand that collections hold value, but how to dispose of them is a problem and can be very time consuming.
 
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