All About Pocket Knives

I got this in recently with a large lot of rough knives / parts. I really like this one. It is an early Valley Forge Cutlery lockback knife measuring 5 1/4 inches long closed. Unfortunately, you can see the chipping to the scales at lower pin, and the backspring is broken. Does anyone know an estimate of value for a knife like this if repaired? Trying to assess if it would be worthy of paying to spend the money for repairs.

Remington and Case made a similar pattern and those both bring a good dollar or two ~ if the spring is still good and you are only worried about the scales I would just leave it alone because rescaling it will drop its value and interest to a lot a collectors from what it is already worth ~ my opinion ~ Nice Knife ~ Keep it original and authentic ~

Unfortunately spring is broken. Would love to get it repaired, but hate to put more into it than its worth. I have several early knives in my collection I consider "relics." Scarce knives that need repair. I might just put this one in that part of my collection.

It probably wouldn't pay if you plan on having it rebuilt to sell, but one of my favorite knives which was one of my dream knives came with a broken back spring. The end piece of the spring that sits under the lock was broken so it wouldn't lock open. I had a repair guy make and install a new spring for under a hundred dollars. I don't have any idea what the AAPK repair guys charge for something like that. Yours needs either a patch epoxied in or new scales. I have several knives that have patches and you would have to know where they were to notice them without a loupe. Also it looks like your pin may been changed to a metal that doesn't match the bolster but that isn't much of anything for a repair guy to fix. If it were mine I would sure try to find someone to bring it back. It's a beautiful and pretty rare knife. I have little interest in keeping an old worn knife authentic if I can have it made usable and still have the scales mostly intact. Some collectors cringe at the thought of doing anything to an old rare knife. I like to keep them as original as I can but if something can be fixed so it is a usable knife again, I lean toward the repair even if the cost doesn't add up. I've spent hours cleaning and repairing old knives that repaired aren't worth a plug nickle. I hope one of the AAPK repair guys answers your question. ____Dave