All About Pocket Knives

I recently purchased this cute little butterfly knife stamped BONTGEN & Sabin. I believe it was made in Germany.

Cool little knife and those are fun to learn tricks with. Be careful with those pearl handles though, one drop and they could crack. There's a ton of videos on YouTube showing how to do different butterfly knife tricks. I bought a cheap Bear & Son trainer to practice with. No edge on it so I don't have to worry about cutting myself.

I don't plan on flipping it...

Beautiful piece. Antique butterfly knives are really facinating. The earliest ones I have are a couple Waltcos from the late 1940s - early 1950s. I did a little research on the Böntgen and Sabin company, better known as Bonsa. They patented a channel-handle construction butterfly knife design in 1880 in Germany, Britain and the USA. Here is a blog post on the topic: http://thebladeblog-ulf.blogspot.com/20 ... y.html?m=1

It seems they were making these from at least 1880s until the 1920s. Looking at some old auction listings, these had a variety of handle materials including solid metal, stag and ivory.

Böntgen & Sabin AG, Stahlwarenfabrik, Solingen.
The Böntgen & Sabin AG Stahlwarenfabrik was originally founded by August Böntgen and Louis Sabin around 1870 and registered in 1876 (Carter, 2001; Goins & Goins, 1998).  In 1922 the Böntgen & Sabin AG Stahlwarenfabrik was advertising their trade name BONSA.  Very little information is available on August Böntgen.  Information on Louis Sabin, on the other hand, is plentiful.  Among the most interesting things is that Louis was a member of the German Reichstag and also represented the Union of Solingen Manufacturers’ Association.  The BONSA (Böntgen & Sabin) Company was behind the production of many Leverlocks.  BONSA Leverlocks can be found with stamps like: ‘BONSA’, ‘B. Svoboda’, ‘Helmut Hartenau’, ‘F. A. Bower Imp. Co.’, ‘G. C. Co.’, ‘IMCO’, ‘ROMO’, ‘Puma’, ‘RAMON’, ‘Solingen Cutlery’, ‘Stainless Import’, and ‘Schoepfer N.Y.-City’ to mention a few.

Patents in Germany and the USA for the invention of the butterfly knife.