All About Pocket Knives

Should probably have posted this in the other sharp items forum but had to share this one.......
Went back over to the flea market across the street from my home again today and checked out a couple of outside vendors who were absent yesterday. Except for a couple of Pak E. Stan monstrosities there were no new knives.
Went inside and started looking around in one vendor's spot that has rows and rows of (usually)junk piled in boxes. In one box with some(junk)tools I come across a pair of old scissors that look like they may have been nice at one time. Unusually shaped,I pull them out for a closer look.
The points are pretty deteriorated and there is some surface rust and on the pivot area there is the name Graef & Schmidt stamped on one side. Nice old cutlery name. There is also a circular area with something on it but it is hard to discern exactly what it is.
I turn it over and to my surprise stamped on the opposite side is J.A. Henckels Solingen Germany! Interesting! Two different company stamps on the same pair of scissors. There is also another circle on this side with something in it but again it is almost impossible to figure out.
I ask the vendor what he wants for them and he replies:"Fifty cents". I probably should have talked him down to a quarter but I was feeling extravagant so I just paid him!
When I got home and started cleaning them this is what I found: The image in the circle on one side was that of Christopher Columbus and the one on the other side a sailing ship(likely one of his)and underneath it the dates(partially off the edge)"1492-1892". This apparently was made for the Columbian Exposition of 1892. I have a ring that has a carved stone set into it with an image of Columbus with those dates which will go nicely with it.
Never no WHAT I'm going to find over there!

Very cool find. Very.

Beautiful. Yeah, they're rough, but provided they've been around 126 years, they don't look that bad. My oldest knife (a Russell Green River paper knife) is also around that same age.

Great job digging through the junk--most of the time, in those junk boxes will be well, junk obviously. But enough digging will often produce a gem like that. Even at 5 (22 now), I found a 1950s tin toy ambulance that way in a box of mostly tiny plastic Cracker Jack toys and other assorted "junk drawer" stuff. In some relatively modern toy cars (1980s-still in stores) a couple years back, I found a complete (still had its hook) and not too beat up Matchbox Dodge crane from the late 1960s--at the very bottom, which finding Regular Wheel era Matchbox, my collection specialty in the toy car hobby, (1952-1969) is pretty rare locally, we have plenty of "picker" (scalper) types plaguing this one flea market. .

Very nice k7k, 4 bits well spent!

I recon it's just coincidence, but that image of Columbus bears a striking resemblance to the one used on Chilean stamps during the exhibition.

WB

whitebuffalo58 wrote:Very nice k7k, 4 bits well spent!

I recon it's just coincidence, but that image of Columbus bears a striking resemblance to the one used on Chilean stamps during the exhibition.

SANY0003.JPG


WB

WOW! I guess it does! Except for the slight beard difference it is pretty much identical. The time frame is right and I am sure Henckels(I am assuming they were the one's who made the scissors)weren't above doing a bit of plagiarizing. You know come to think of it I may have seen that ship image somewhere before;possibly on a stamp.

That’s as cool as all get out right there!!!

That is pretty darn neat! Cool find!

Graef & Schmidt were the USA importers of J.A.Henckels knives from 1880's to about WW II. I have seen old multiblades marked only "Graef & Schmidt" that were made by J.A.Henckels but not marked as such.
kj