Gun shows like flea markets have plenty of junk and sometimes treasure. I worked the circuit for a while selling knives and got to know a lot of other dealers. That served me well as not only were most nice enough to extend me the courtesy of dealer prices on things I wanted to buy but also would order, swap, dig out from boxes at home and just plain find knives I was looking for but having a difficult time actually sealing the deal on.
The Gerber Sportsman 2 "V" steel in Vascowear was just such a knife. I first laid eyes on one back when they were being made sometime between 81 and maybe 86? I could never get one of my own for literally decades. This was before E bay and Blade forums and when I began even before the internet existed.
To make a long story short another dealer I knew who continued on with the family business after her husband passed away actually took my order home and found the knife put away in her husbands collection and remembered to bring it to me 4 months later next time I saw her. Even though I was not selling knives any more I was still sold this difficult to find knife for essentially what her husband had bought it for.
This was about 2007-8 so it was 20 years later that I actually got the knife I had set out to get 20 years before. I had a couple Vascowear fixed blade customs by then and was familiar with the steel from a user perspective more than just the impression I had from using a friends knife 20 years before. That old Gerber was like NIB , and provided me with a real knife in hand to compare with my memories. I was surprised to find that it was over 50 degrees inclusive, yet polished to a mirror and would shave hairs easily.
Anyway, Gun shows have their pros and cons. I could come up with stories like that about Guns, ammo, etc. too ( I started collecting ammo when I was about 8 when I used to go to gun shows ). Types of ammunition I had tried to find for over 30 years would just show up one day and the dealer would have a good story about a trade he just made. I had a dealer come up with some early Spyderco Workers from the 80's that showed up in the 2010 - 11 time frame from some warehouse somewhere.
I went over 30 years without missing a gun show. I stopped when things began getting crazy and there was a waiting line to get in. That time frame happened to coincide with some particularly broke years. Still, over the years I had some interesting times. I recall buying Silver eagles for $4-5 ( when silver was under $4 an oz.), and gold was under $400, then a year later over $30
200 round packs of .308 for $25, mags for $3 to $6 each, etc, etc.
The only way to see the years new knife releases were dealers at gun shows. No local dealers could compare due to overhead. Gun show dealers were the Knifecenter and Knife works of the day before the internet changed things. Now internet dealers even with their problems have an advantage ( the ones with actual store fronts anyways) and are doing to knife dealers at the gun shows what they did to Gun stores with knife sections.
Such is life.
