Remington 5 blade sowbelly

[garyk1949]

How does one determine if a knife is authentic, reworked or just a reproduction? This 5 blade Remington sowbelly looks as if the blades have never been sharpened, the large blade has a different tang stamp which has the made in USA around the circle. Does anyone have any idea on its value?

[msteele6]

The only way to become proficient at detecting fakes and reworks in pocket knives is exactly the same way that you become proficient in any other endeavor - study.

I have personally looked at thousands of Remingtons and after a while variations from normal become glaringly obvious. The example knife really is one that you could spot as a fake from ten feet away. The most obvious problem with this particular knife is the jigging on the bone handles. I personally own 24 Remingtons with bone handles and can assure you that this knife's handles show no resemblance to an authentic one.

I have heard that Secret Service agents don't study counterfeit in order to determine whether bills are fake or not but rather, they intensively study the real thing, that way, the counterfeits stand out like sore thumbs and while I can't vouch for the accuracy of that, I can vouch for the fact that studying authentic knives will lead to the ability to spot MOST fakes.

As an aside, I would add that this particular pattern, being one of the most valuable Remingtons is also one of the most frequently faked ones and therefore should always be studied with particular care.

Sorry that there isn't any shortcut, it would be nice if fakers would misspell "Remington" or some such, but there just isn't.

P.S. as a lover of old knives the value of the knife that is the subject of this thread is about $10 - as a user.

I've added some authentic Remingtons for comparison (notice, in particular, how the jigs on the subject knife seem to be in little groups of four jigs, angled toward the edge of the knife, whereas the authentic knives have Rogers jigging which is random, it may be that the fakers have a tool with four bits, making the jigging process more efficient, but less authentic):

[Knife Nut]

In 40+ years of collecting I've handled one authentic Remington sowbelly. They are out there but about as rare as hens teeth.

Paul