Knife find in Mexico

[galvanic1882]

I am grateful to Mark Erickson for making it possible for me to acquire these 3 knives that came from a haul that were in storage in Mexico for many years and just saw the light of day. Below is a description from Mark's page on FaceBook and after that is some more info on Ring Cutlery and the B. Svoboda marks. These are smaller picklocks and great additions to my growing collection of these little guys.

The pic bone and the purple knife with the dragon on the back are stamped Ring Cutlery B Svoboda Japan and the horn handled one is marked Ring Cutlery B Svoboda Italy. The Dragon knife is one of a very few that were found in this group. All are Mint and came in there original boxes. The boxes are unmarked.

The other pictures are of some of the knives in this find.

Here is Mark's comments on the find.
It's time for my Big Reveal! Most of you already know that I got a hold of some New Old Stock switchblades that had been in storage for over 60 years, but I wasn't ready to tell the whole story until now. The old factory where the knives were found is in Mexico and there were 351 knives total and all but 9 were switchblades!! They were found in the fall of 2020 and the person who found them sold them to someone else shortly after and that person sold them to me. It's been a challenge to get all of the knives out of Mexico and into my hands. It took 7 months, but I finally have all of the knives in my possession and it's time to break the story.
The person who found the knives in the warehouse didn't know anything about the history of the knives, or anything about the knives themselves except that the factory where they were found closed in the early 70s and never re-opened. He was just trying to clean the warehouse out and selling the knives was only one task of many that he had to accomplish. He took the knives to a local market which is where he met the guy who sold them to me. I'm guessing that there were probably some catalogs, or fliers with the knives, but the person who found them would not understand the significance of those. I've tried to track him down with no success.
I'm pretty confident that this was inventory of a company who bought the knives from the manufacturers in the 1950s and resold them to Mexican vendors, who in turn sold them to tourists as souvenirs. That's just educated speculation, but what I do know is that there were over 150 Italian picklocks, over 170 Japanese switchblades and over 20 German knives in the find. Nearly all of the Italian picklocks are 16cm stilettos and fishtails. There were just a few 8 inch picklocks, but those have already found new homes. Most of the knives in the find were stamped either Ring Cutlery, or B Svoboda, or both! Some of the picklocks were stamped Made In Italy and just a few stamped INTER ITALY. I believe that means that nearly all of these were bought from the importer B Svoboda. Not sure where the Ring Cutlery comes in, unless maybe that was the name of the company in Mexico who contracted with B Svoboda to have them made for them with their name on them? Italian and Japanese switchblades are stamped Ring Cutlery, some with the B Svoboda also, over Japan. The German knives are mostly stamped Solingen Cutlery over B Svoboda over Germany. Many of the Italian picklocks are stamped Ring Cutlery over B Svoboda over Italy.
One of the Cool things that I learned from this find is that many Italian picklocks were originally sold in wax paper instruction wrappers!!! I had never seen, or heard of that before, but most of these Italian pickocks are still in the original instruction wrappers!! Many of the Japanese switchblades are also wrapped in wax paper and in original individual boxes! There were even three larger boxes that each contain 12 or 14 of these wrapped picklocks, just as they came from the factory in Italy in the late 1950s! It's really amazing to see them and to know that I'm the second, or third person to see them since they were made over 60 years ago!
I have included just a few pics showing a small part of the find here. I will be sharing more pictures and more information over time. This is a truly AMAZING find for the switchblade collecting world. I suspect that it will be known henceforth as the 2020 Mexico Find. �� I plan to sell all of the knives except for a couple that I want to keep as a reminder. I plan to make laminated certificates of authenticity for each knife to identify them as actual knives from this find which should add quite a bit to their value down the road.
I would like to let all of my group members share in this amazing historical find, but there aren't enough knives for everyone to buy one, sadly. You can all at least share in the excitement and historical significance of this find! Many of you can actually own a knife from the find if you're interested. I'd like to start by focusing on the nearly 100 Japanese bone handled lever knives at a GREAT price to my group members. I'll bring up the previous post on them and update it with the offer soon. In the meantime, take it all in with more to come!! ��

Here is more info I found on another site about these marks.

B. Svoboda
Liberty Organization (Importer?)
Montrose, California
c1950 until at least 1997

B SVOBODA was a brand name of the Ring Cutlery Company of California that imported knives from Germany and was a part of the Liberty Organization. Solingen Cutlery B SVOBODA are Hand Made and Extremely Rare Switchblade Automatics from Germany.

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Copied from Blade Forums:
Mr. B. Svoboda was the founder of the cutlery wholesaler called Liberty Organization, in Montrose, California, established circa 1950. I used to know his first name, but I forgot. This knife was made for his firm by one of the contract manufacturers in Solingen. They made virtually identical knives for all comers, so you will see similar knives with a variety of brands.

[ea42]

Congrats Mike! Like finding a time capsule, what an amazing find!

Eric

P.S. - Found this in Goins:

"RING CUTLERY B. SVOBODA JAPAN c. 1950 - present
This marking was seen on a switchblade knife. The import firm is
in Montrose, California"

That would definitely seem to tie the Ring Cutlery and Liberty names together. By the way the book was copyrighted in 1998 so "present" would be up to that year.

[Madmarco]

Fabulous find Mike, congrats! Teriffic background story too!

[galvanic1882]

Thanks guys Mark did an amazing thing finding these and offering some to us knife nuts!!

[FRJ]

An interesting story and it's really neat that you got some of those knives, Mike. Good for you.

[Kramersknife]

Amazing find...I have many but not a Svoboda I did the same years ago but was not knives but old toy guns long forgotten storage facility.... its a Indiana Jones Moment for sure..Nice score