New collector

[auctionmike]

I'm new to knife collecting. I started last night with buying a number of Case knives at an auction. How do you tell bone from imitation bone. I bought one numbered 62109X but I cannot find the number in the system. Please help.

[johnnierotten]

Go to the drop down box"articles & research",click on case...Lot of info there to help you out.
The first number is 6,I believe thats jigged bone.

to the site!!

PS:I just looked,could be imitation jigged bone also..post a pic,I can usually tell by looking at it, if not I'm sure someone else can.

[keithlong]

As it has beensaid the number 6 stands for jigged bone handles, the number 2 means it has 2 blades and the remainder numbers is the pattern number. Welcome to the site.

[griz1200]

As Johnnie and Keithlong said, the 6 means bone, but Case also used the number 6 for their Delrin handled knives.

Griz

[BIGHEAD]

But even with the 6 I have never seen one that even remotely looked like bone.

[beau5278]

If you look at the scales under magnification,a jewelers loupe works best,you'll see tiny holes and imperfections in a bone scale where the blood flowed though the bone,delrin won't have those imperfections,it will generally look smoother,especially on the edges.There is a difference in the hardness between the 2 materials also,bone being much harder.If any of the knives are from the middle 1970s,look closely at those,that seems to me to be the years that you find most of the delrin.If you can post pictures,there are quite a few people here that could tell you which is which and that would give you a starting point.

[msteele6]

Nobody's mentioned it yet, but one way to tell Delrin from bone on the later Case knives ('70's) is by looking at the shield. On the Delrin knives the word "Case" is not circled, on the bone knives, it is circled. This convention doesn't apply to the earlier Case knives (early '70's, that is) and I don't know the exact date at which Case began using this convention, but I am sure that someone on the forum will know that exact information. In any case, if the shield on your knife does NOT have the word "Case" circled it is definitely Delrin.

[msteele6]

Just noticed your second question about the 62109X. The book I have handy (Ritchie and Stewart) lists this pattern number and gives it the name "Baby Copperhead", they are fairly common, but a nice little pen knife.