I always enjoy reading through them and I particularly like the old timey ads peppered throughout the pages, and of course I’m always on the lookout for knife ads – which brings me to the point. I think I found a couple of Schrade knives from 1912-1913 which would be the oldest images I have come across...*if* I'm right.
The first knife is from the December 1912 issue and it is a 3-1/8” senator pattern that looks an awful lot like the 8103 from Catalog E. In this era I believe Shapleigh was buying a lot of knives from Empire so that’s another possibility but something about it says ‘Schrade’ to me. Here’s a pic:
I’ve had that issue for a long time and never thought to share the pic because it was really just a gut feeling, but I’m officially bumping that feeling up to a full fledged hunch today. I got my hands on another issue which just so happens to be the January 1913 edition – the very next month, and on page 755 is a switchblade that I thought was a Schrade as soon as I saw it but I know very little about autos so I ran it past a reliable expert on Schrade autos who is also of the opinion that knife is a Schrade. Here’s the knife:
So there you have it – a possible sighting of a Schrade knife from 1912. Wondering what other folks think. Are those Schrades or am I staring at these magazines too long and starting to hallucinate?
