High quality pocketknife, huge sentimental value, name plate fell off.
December 30, 2023 12:05 AM   Subscribe

Gorgeous pocket knife, from when grandfathers passed it to son who passed to his son, etc and etc. Name plate came loose, disappeared. My friend has a friend in common, an art jeweler, where name plate was now very cool, owners initials. But he wants to know the brand, maybe replace with original name plate Ie "Old Timer" or "Schrade" or whatever. Where online can he find what he's looking for, pictures of knives. He's a good guy, doesn't know I'm in on it now, hoping to help.
posted by dancestoblue to Grab Bag (3 answers total)
 
If I'm reading you correctly, you've got a friend looking for an ID on an old vintage pocketknife.

Lots of collector/enthusiast communities are still running various old school web forums, so the first thing I would try would be to post pictures on the proper subforums to see if the community can figure out the maker. For example, BladeForums.com has the Bernard Levine's Knife Collecting & Identification subforum. That's just one site I found from a quick "knife collector forum" Google search, there are others you could try also. You might have to register/join the forums before posting.

This seems more efficient than your friend (or you) trying to poke through pages and pages of pictures of items that all look pretty much the same to the untrained eye. Also for old stuff often the only source of pictures are scans of paper catalogs, or one dude running his own website as a labor of love, and these kinds of forums are where these scans are posted or where someone will give you a link to that one dude's site.

(I know nothing about knives or knife collecting specifically, but I'm a lifelong musician and guitar player and music gear enthusiast, and these sorts of web forums have been an invaluable source of info for me over the years. Taking a quick look around the knife forums I found, they seem very similar.)

There are undoubtedly also reddit subs about knives and knife collecting you could try posting pictures in (although IME reddits often have a high percentage of "no idea, just guessing" answers which are not helpful.) You could try grabbing some pics and linking them here, too, in case any mefites are knife collectors.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:50 AM on December 30, 2023 [3 favorites]


I mean, post a link to snaps here. surprising breadth of knowledge lurking about.

...if you have some, that is. I just assumed...
posted by j_curiouser at 7:37 AM on December 30, 2023 [2 favorites]


Unless it's bespoke, the manufacturer or model is usually stamped at the base of the largest blade, nearest a bolster.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:13 AM on December 30, 2023 [2 favorites]


« Older Best Advice for being an exchange student and host...   |   putting money in a HYSA - explain it to me like... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.