All About Pocket Knives

This is an interesting one. Seller’s headline says “Rare! Rare! Rare!” Case Tested 5380. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-CASE-TESTE ... SwdilffQnG

So rare in fact that a real one never existed. Case never made the 80 pattern in stag until sometime in the past 30 years, never in the Tested era. This one has a shield probably from around the 1970’s, and thick Sambar stag which was not used until much later than the Tested era. The knife had bone or Delrin handles when it left the factory.

Ken

In my humble opinion, the blades look too new, the stag has been poorly fit to the knife, and you can see in several of the pictures that the shield has not been inlayed at all, or at best, poorly inlayed and is sitting on top of the surface of the scale.

That is one super buffed knife!

Bob

Weird one! I'm seeing several things off:

1. The tang stamp looks very questionable, possibly cold struck
2. The shield looks to be 70's-90's era
3. The tang kicks and overall blade profiles on the smaller blades look like they are from a 70's dotted era knife
4. The nail nicks, especially on the master blade, look 70's era.

Any chance we could see the pile side tang? Curious if the lighter 70's era stamping has been ground away. I'm thinking this has been cobbled together from some genuine Case parts that have been deceptively re-worked. They did do a "nice" job on attempting to spin the rivets, but if it has nickel liners it should have all nickel pins, especially on stag handled knife. I have a 70's 7 dot 3347 with all nickel liners and all pins are nickel even on that.

The stag looks nice and genuinely aged, but I would say there is no way this is a Tested era knife.

DEFINITELY FAKE, Counterfeit for sure. Nothing looks tested about that knife!! Hard to believe someone would counterfeit a knife that was never made, mush less the bidders and 44 watchers on ebay

Tom