Needing Information on this 6488 Congress

[Abuckles_79]

All I know about it is 1920 - 1940 Tested xx Green Bone. How can you actually tell what year this knife made? Thanks.

[rodgers62074]

The Case Tested stamping on the main blade and the letters on the sheild. I cant see the stamping but, the sheild is correct for a 1920-1940 Case folder .

[Abuckles_79]

Here is the tang stamp. The knife was very very dirty. Done a very light cleaning and it come alive. I was just trying to pinpoint a specific year it was made between 20 and 40.

[Mumbleypeg]

No one knows the exact actual dates when the TESTED XX stamp was used. What is known is the “published” dates 1920-1940 are only “guesstimates”. And they are wrong, yet they persist. Recommend you read the posts in this thread regarding the Case tang stamps years of use. viewtopic.php?p=1186821#p1186821 There are other posts having similar content, with pictures of knives made during WWII for both the military and commercial market, and having the same “long-tail C” TESTED XX stamp. So it was used well into the 1940s, and some believe prior to 1920. (It is also reasonable to assume there is a period of time during which both the TESTED XX and CASE XX stamps were in use simultaneously).

There were differences in materials, tooling (on some patterns) and shields used during the time the TESTED XX stamp was used. Some of those differences are used by collectors to determine relative age (early, late, etc) with in the TESTED XX era. There were at least three different shields during that time, but again no documentation exists to define the exact dates of their use. Many believe the “closed C, tall S” shield (the one on your pictured knife) is the earliest, but exact dates of use are unknown. And as with stamps, during a transition to a new shield design there was probably more than just one in use until all the old ones were used up.

Welcome to AAPK.

Ken