Why can,t I find a price in book for 1940 to 64 5488 case?

[sammysoccerball0126]

Ive got a 1940 to64 India stag casexx four blade stag knife and I looked at the pricing chart on old cases and can,t find it why?

[peanut740]

What book?

[ludwig26]

Collecting Case Knives by Steve pfeiffer has it at 1,250.00. If you like case knives by this book. I have his 2nd edition. I refer to it daily.
Kerry

.

[sammysoccerball0126]

Collecting Case Knives by Steve pfeiffer has it at 1,250.00. If you like case knives by this book. I have his 2nd edition. I refer to it daily.
Kerry

.

Thank you very much, I,ve always bought mainly german made knives in the past so I,m a little green when it comes to cases.

[Mumbleypeg]

I don't put much stock in published price guides for knives. They represent an opinion or assessment of the author's knowledge at the time they were written. Probably out of date by the time the book was published. They do have some value however in establishing a relative value assessment between different patterns, different handle materials, etc. For example if the guide lists a Case stag 83 pattern whittler as more valuable than a Case stag 18 pattern stockman, it probably is still more valuable 10 or 20 years later. During that time the values of both knives probably have changed, but not much relative to one another (the 83 is likely still more valuable than the 18).

The best source of current values is probably eBay comparable sales. Limit your search to completed sales on as near-identical items as you can find (same knife, same age, similar condition). I "watch" a lot of eBay sales on knives of interest to me even if I have no intention of buying, just to keep up with values.

More to the point of the OP question, I don't see any recent eBay sales of a comparable knife approaching the $1250 range.

Ken

[Railsplitter]

Excellent advice, Ken.

Ebay Completed Listings is a great tool for assessing current value. Possibly the best tool out there for that purpose. It lets us see what buyers are paying for a particular knife right now. There aren't too many other places where that kind of current information can be found in one place.

[Rookie]

I agree. Knife guides are great tools for ID'ing knives, and getting a ballpark high-end value. However, I've never got "book value" on any knife I've sold.

My collection is focused on more scarce (low production number) knives, so they don't come up for sale often. Maybe 10-20 times a year is all. Much like MumbleyPeg, I watch a lot of auctions on Ebay to keep up with their values, and then I keep a spreadsheet to I can track the value trends. It would be near impossible to do that with a more common made knife that sells 100 times a day on Ebay, but for my interests it works well.