All About Pocket Knives

This listing has a long story w/ it about a partnership of Parker and Frost and Schrade and how it went sideways. Forgive my ignorance if this is common knowledge. I haven’t collected many Schrades and am unfamiliar w/ this bit of history. Curious about the veracity of the story and if this knife is as rare as he claims? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Schrade-Redbon ... SwOuBbnCb0
Sorry I can’t copy the text, it doesn’t want to copy when working off of an Ipad.
SSk

SSK, the story might be true but if DITWTEXAS said it is usually hot it Texas in July I would have my doubts. He's always got a big story and an even higher price for his "charity". I think he descended from PT Barnum. I don't trust the guy. Sorry to be so candid and subtle with my thought. I actually only mentioned his good points.

For some reason that seller makes me think of my favorite news source, The Onion.

doglegg wrote:SSK, the story might be true but if DITWTEXAS said it is usually hot it Texas in July I would have my doubts. He's always got a big story and an even higher price for his "charity". I think he descended from PT Barnum. I don't trust the guy. Sorry to be so candid and subtle with my thought. I actually only mentioned his good points.

Doglegg, Didn’t know that about this seller. I question the how and why of him saying that 100% of the proceeds go to charity, so where did the knives come from, are they donated? Something seems awfully fishy.
Still wonder about the issues he states between Parker, Frost and Schrade?
SSk

I think there might be partial truth to what he is saying. I do not recall details of the schrade parker frost story as those knives don't interest me much, so I can't help you there. You should be able to dig up the real scoop on those knives as I recall reading about it here somewhere.

However what ditwit says about his knives that he sells is frequently blown up or incorrect. He will randomly date ages of various knives and calls them sfo's or whatever else that sounds good. He spreads misinformation and is stubborn and flat out rude about taking friendly advice. The schrade parker frost knives are not particularly hard to come by, and they certainly aren't worth his ridiculous prices. I recommend you do not buy anything from this person.

This seller is probably the least authoritative seller on eBay IMHO.
He says the handles are "Rogers Red Bone" which is new to me. Never heard of "Rogers Red Bone." Rogers went out of business about 1963 and he said this knife was made in the mid-1970s? I wonder how that works... Oh, I get it "Warehouse find" of antique Rogers Red Bone!

From what I recall hearing the dissolution of the Parker-Frost partnership had more to do with Mister Parker than anything else. It seems many of his ventures were short lived, for whatever reason.
I have spent many years studying Schrade and Albert Baer's cutlery empire. This is the first time I have ever heard of any disagreement between Parker- Frost and Albert Baer.

I think he eBay seller makes up whatever story he thinks will fetch him the ridiculous prices he asks for his knives.

The seller has a long history here on AAPK. A search for “ditwtexas” will find a lot of skepticism regarding the seller and posts regarding member’s interactions with him/her/it.

Ken

But the knife is a Schrade made by either Schrade or Camillus for Schrade. The bone handled Parker-Frost Schrade made knives are good knives, worth collecting and using.
kj

kootenay joe wrote:But the knife is a Schrade made by either Schrade or Camillus for Schrade. The bone handled Parker-Frost Schrade made knives are good knives, worth collecting and using.
kj

Absolutely KJ, I agree completely! It is a USA Schrade and NIB, it might be worth $75 on a good day, but $189.99 is just a crazy number for that knife, IMO.

Thanks Paul, Dale, Ken and Roland. I appreciate the warning. Since this story is unfamiliar to the folks here, that makes me feel a little better that I had never heard this story before. I will just keep my eyes open for other Schrade bone handled knives. I wasn’t thinking very seriously about buying this one. The story didn’t sound right and I don’t like his approach. This is either someone who is very full of himself or is dishonest. Don’t want to deal with someone like that anyway. It is a nice looking knife though.
SSk

MADE BY SCHRADE FOR FROST SET OF 5 FARMER /TRAPPER CANT REMEMBER ALL 5 BLADES ETCHED. VALUE ABOUT 25.OO TO 30.00 EACH . CAME IN SHOW CASE .

doglegg wrote:I actually only mentioned his good points.

Good one! The man is a crook. There is no 'charity.'

this is what Bruce Voyles had to say about the Schrade / Parker Frost knives.

Jim Parker was an antique knife trader/gun dealer who decided when the 1968 Gun Control Act restricted the sales of guns across state lines that knives were a good alternative. He was credit manager of Sherwin-Williams Paint in Chattanooga at the time. He would also buy modern knives, etc. and one of his customers was Jim Frost, who was working at an Army Ammunition Plant selling knives out of his lunchbox.
They formed a company in the early 70's, Parker was President of the National Knife Collectors Association and Frost was Executive director. Parker continued selling old knives on his own, Frostsold the new knives, and together their partnership sold commemorative knives starting in 1974 with a set call the Eagle set, which were made by Imperial/Schrade. Not sure which factory actually manufactured the knives, but they were paid for through Schrade. These were 4" 3 blade stock knives (Not 8OT's, as the are not "Old Timers"). They followed up with a three knife set called the Service Series, honoring the founding of the Army, Navy and Marines--these knives were crimped bolster knives made by Imperial. These sets were part of the rush to get knives out for the 1976 Bicentennial.
At that time W. R. Case & Sons knives were the only knives still being made in the US with bone handles, and there was a huge collector demand for US made bone handled knives. Parker andFrost went to Schrade with the idea, and they produced a series of bone handle knives on existing Schrade patterns. There were a few stags made in the stock pattern as well. They were introduced in 1978 and so dated on the back of the blade, and each knife was given a number as a pattern, Trappers might be a model 3, and would be numbered 1978-3. Stockmen were 1978-5 as I recall, etc. (not sure on the specific numbers as I'd doing this off the top of my head at the moment--should be obvious on the knives themselves though).
Each major pattern was available in green, red, or brown bone. Saw cut delrin black handles were also made.
Parker-Frost merged all of their businesses when this set was made, and each owned equally the vintage, modern, and commemorative business. As I recall Parker told me they had borrowed 3 million dollars to order the knives.
However, the Schrade mark was not supposed to be on the back of the tang--which was not greeted with any enthusiasm when it was discovered. (In fact it was a major crisis and it took quite a bit of talk to keep the lawyers out of it. Eventually they did come to some agreement and the knives were accepted).
Originally there were only to be four major distributors of the knives: Parker-Frost, Craig Matthews Cutlery, House of Knives in Louisville, KY, and Voyles Cutlery (yours truly). However when sales did not reach projections it was opened up to everyone and the market flooded. At one point the bone handled boxed knives could be bought for $8.00 each, despite the $25.00 retail. The same knife with a delrin handled could be had with a Schrade only tang mark at about half that amount.
This was supposed to be an ongoing production line to compete with Case on the collector market--but the Schrade name on the knife allowed the collectors to instantly compare the delrin handled Schrade with the Bone handled Parker-Frost and there was price resistance to the additional cost required for the bone handles and Parker-Frost mark up. In my opinion the Schrade mark on the knives was the kiss of death for the line at the time.
About this time Parker-Frost also started importing knives from Japan, which sold much better than the overpriced Parker-Frost/Schrade-made knives. (And the Japanese knives didn't have the name of the Japanese manufacturer on the back). Once the first few patterns from Japan hit Parker-Frost never looked back and at one point became the largest importer of knives in the US.
Parker and Frost went their own separate ways prior to 1980, with both continuing to import knives from Japan as Parker Cutlery Eagle Brand knives, and Frost who used the Falcon as his mark.
Frost continues today, and has brought knives in from nearly every major knife manufacturing company. He is a major supplier of the knives sold on TV sales channels--and has a huge facility alongside I-75 on the north side of Chattanooga, TN.
Parker went on to buy Cutlery World Stores, W. R. Case, as well as starting a factory in Jacksonville, Alabama which evolved into Bear & Son Cutlery today. Jim Parker passed away a few years ago, his son Buzz continues the family business today, importing Bulldog knives from Germany.
As far as my background as the source of this info is a quote from legendary gun writer Elmer Keith. "Hell, I was there." While still going to college in Atlanta in 1974-75 I made sales calls for Parker-Frost on their Eagle sets and Service series to Beck & Gregg Hardware. I moved to Chattanooga in 1977 to edit the NKCA magazine and learned much of what I know about knives, people, and life in general from Jim Parker. He is one of the few people who have passed on that I miss a little more every day. He left a huge gap in the knife world.

Bruce Voyles

Thanks dweb.

Great read ! Thank You !
I believe this to be as accurate a history of that time for Parker and Frost as you will find anywhere. It is reference material.
kj

Thanks for the history.

I was wondering what the connection was.