Definitely a fake

[OSCAR]

Ran across a fake Benchmade at a flea market recently. Dead giveaways...
Had Benchmade logo perfectly but...
No axis lock, instead had mid lock back.
Tang stamp had 440 for steel and Taiwan.
Buyer beware! Look closely before you buy.

[Greenman]

Ran across a fake Benchmade at a flea market recently. Dead giveaways...
Had Benchmade logo perfectly but...
No axis lock, instead had mid lock back.
Tang stamp had 440 for steel and Taiwan.
Buyer beware! Look closely before you buy.

Actually, the knife you found was most likely not a fake!

I was a Benchmade authorised dealer for approximately twenty years (~1990–2010). If my memory serves, from sometime in the early 2000s until its discontinuation in 2010, Benchmade offered what they called their “Red Class” knives. This was a budget-priced line of Benchmade-branded cutlery—packaged in a bright red box—that didn’t offer some of the advanced technical features (such as the AXIS lock) or the premium blade steels and high-tech handle materials of their higher-priced Blue Class, Black Class, or Gold Class stablemates. A few of the Red Class knives were made in the USA; but most were made in either Taiwan or mainland China. The blade steels found on the imported knives included 440C, AUS8A, and 9Cr13. I found an older YouTube review (not mine) of one of the more popular Red Class knives—a Model 10400 Pika II. The YouTuber’s knife is apparently made in China with a 9Cr13 blade, but I have observed the same model knife with blade markings indicating that it was manufactured in Taiwan using 440C as the blade steel.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ECATnd0LB0

BTW, the quality of most of Benchmade’s Red Class knives was similar to the quality of the knives sold by Columbia River Knife & Tool (CRKT). I would not be surprised to find that the same factories in Asia manufactured products for both of the aforementioned companies.

[Doc B]

What Josh said