Many thanks, John. At least I filtered out the tourist pieces.
I'm not a collector, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm kinda with Berk here. I find the traditional, individually made khuks more interesting in general. The variations seem nearly endless, and thanks to folks like J.P. and others, the regional affiliation can be found. They all seem to feel different, and could have been made for a specific task, or person. They can be uniquely decorated. It's like a tiny bit of a varied culture.
I'd rather a few of those than an assembly of nearly identical military pieces made in a factory. The military pieces with a genuine interesting provenance I probably couldn't afford anyway. A military khuk old enough to have been individually made for the user instead of cranked out to specs, would be as interesting to me as the traditional styles.
Some does seem to have a real fixation with the military aspect though, from the number of essentially non-military issue khuks offered as "fighting knives", daggers, etc, or bearing phony military provenance.
Why an essentially mass-produced khuk made to unvarying military specs is thought to be inherently more interesting than a unique, individually hand made piece is beyond me. Especially since the Ghorka's may very well have been making the history with a khuk from the village instead of the issue model.
