I used to collect old knives. Not collectibles you bought online or in hardware stores but old knives found in garage sales, flea markets, and such. My granddad traded and sold knives. He traded me out of couple of good knives. He always saw to it I left with a good looking knife in my pocket but he knew good knives; I didn’t. My uncle Sam was a knife trader. He used the knives he carried. A good knife was a tool. He kept knife sharp. He showed me how to sharpen a knife. At one time I had twenty-five or thirty knives. A dozen or so were just knives. The rest, good carbon steel. I never have cottoned too much to a stainless steel knife. All that said, I am losing some of my abilities. I can no longer sharpen a knife as I used to. Over the years I have kept the hair on my left arm and the back of my left hand free of hair. I would shave them off to determine how sharp my knife was. Now days when I do that I usually wind up not shaving the hair but cutting my hand or arm. Trying to sharpen knives the last few years has made bandaids a staple around my place. The picture above is off an old Camillus knife made in NewYork. My uncle Elmer gave it to me just before he died. When was that? The early seventies I’m thinking. The old whetstone and case I bought in Big Spring, Texas From a Case Tractor dealer. That too was in the early seventies. I have given amy grandkids knives, the ones that wanted one. I have four knives left. One my brother gave me back some years before I retired. Another knife a friend gave me, back when we had cabins on the lake adjacent to each other. It’s a French Farmer’s knife with one good blade. The knife i carry in my pocket is a cheap nothing knife. It has wooden handles and stamped on one side of these wooden handles is the word, CURTIS. It has one stainless steel blade and was made in China. I don’t remember where I got it. There is no point to this comment as there usually is none on anything I write. These are simply some thoughts at the end of the day.
I can easily understand the temptation to collect knives. I have never had many of them at one time, and am not a collector, but I appreciate a good knife, and I think I would enjoy collecting them and may have if I had stayed in rural Michigan.
@Bill Boggs Your OP reminded me of two things: Case knives are among the best, and, my wife's father, deceased since 1996, never went about without his pocketknife, and used it numerous times in my presence. Some revere knives, some handguns; I love both. Frank
The remains of the old Camillus Cutlery building has been turned into loft-style apartments. https://www.syracuse.com/news/index...apartments_popular_coffee_shop_to_open_o.html A group of Camillus Cutlery employees from the early days.