All About Pocket Knives

I don't think I have. It is stamped PROLIFIC (over) HB & SON (over) SHEFFIELD. I think that is Henry Barnascone & Son. One blade and a pencil stub holder and the handle is stamped with postal rates. It's for sale in the U.K. for more than I'm willing to pay ($360). Certainly unusual but inexpensively made.

See: https://www.etsy.com/listing/971540969/ ... _active_49.

The Great Britain Philatelic Society has a site that shows historic postal rates, and that dates the knife to the 1870s - 1880s.

Dennis

That is very interesting, I have never seen one of those. More than I would pay also.

Very different, but yes the price is outside of my budget.

deo-pa wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 6:06 pm I don't think I have. It is stamped PROLIFIC (over) HB & SON (over) SHEFFIELD. I think that is Henry Barnascone & Son.

Dennis

That is spot on;the Prolific is one of the marks of H.Bernascone & Sons.Interesting knife.

Interesting, but in my opinion very optimistically priced.

I am always interested to see a kind of knife that I never knew existed. Thanks for posting, Dennis.

Again the value of anything is what the buyer is willing to pay and what the seller is willing to let it go for. Would I pay that much for it? If I were a collector of English postal items or unusual knives(I am) and had the means to do so;in a heartbeat.
I had an Al Mar knife once(forget the model but the sheath looked like a holster for a gun)that wasn't particularly rare and I wound up giving it to a good friend of mine who was also a fellow knife accumulator. A short time later I was perusing e-Bay and saw an identical model sell for more than four hundred dollars. Was that knife worth it? To the person who bought it apparently so.
I have an old Marbles knife I paid seventy five cents for at an estate sale and was offered three hundred dollars for by a member on this forum.Was it worth it? Apparently to that person.Did I sell it? No. Why? Because I didn't buy it to roll over;I bought it because I liked it and it was unusual. I'm glad my wife understands me!
I bought a wristwatch at a yard sale for five dollars and that model is currently selling for about three thousand dollars. I haven't sold it either because I didn't buy it to roll over either. Wife is on the fence about this one.
Sorry for the rant but I am really surprised someone hasn't jumped on it before now. I'll shut up now.

Cool, but not $360 cool.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing!!

I have one almost identical but without the postal rates, and mine comes with a mechanical pencil made for it that slides in where the pencil does on this knife. Mine is made in Italy, made of nickel silver and has two blades. I think mine cost about $5. I'll try to post a picture later today to compare them.____Dave

The saga continues for this postman's knife. It wasn't clear to me that this knife had a backspring so I asked the seller. His description says the handle is brass but it certainly doesn't look like it, so I asked about that as well. He commented there was no backspring and indeed it is made of brass.

That got me scratching my head so I asked if the blade is just loose or is it squeezed between the handle plates so it stays in position by friction (a lousy idea but it might sort of work). He responded that he took a closer look and it indeed has a backspring of sorts, and sent the attached photo.

His description also says the knife is stamped "THOMAS'S PATENT." So that sent me off on another search of old patents with that name which led me to patents for a revolver, a typewriter, and a vaginal speculum (bet that's the first time those words have appeared in AAPK! ), but nothing knife-related.

One of the true joys of collecting old knives is the repeated journey down rabbit holes of strange information. I take a crazy pleasure in realizing that some day a gynecologist will be seeking to buy a new instrument and his search will lead to my post!

Dennis

Here's a similar knife from Italy, only it doesn't have postal rates, has two blades, has a mechanical pencil made for it, and is a little better made and made of nickel silver. I really curious as to how common these are and how many variants there are.____Dave

I really curious as to how common these are and how many variants there are.____Dave

That's a great question Dave. Since the design is simple to make perhaps variations on this theme are fairly common. I could see it being sold as a general purpose office knife. A way to keep a pencil handy, and have a light-weight blade for general office duty (plus in your case a nail file too). Maybe the one I posted is not really a postman's knife. Maybe it's an office knife with the postage rates listed as merely a convenient reminder to the owner of the current rates.

Maybe the real estate on the handles was used for a variety of general purposes; say advertising, a short ruler, ...what else might an office worker want to have at hand that you could emboss on the handle?

Now that I think about it that makes more sense than my OP being a special postman's knife. Does a postman frequently need a pencil? Maybe. Does a postman need the rates at hand? Not really, he knows those by heart. Thanks for provoking my thinking Dave. I hope a few more examples show up here.

Dennis