All About Pocket Knives

Im new to here and trying to attach some pics of a Robeson display case collection that my dad left me when he passed away 9 years ago. Im not sure of the value though. Maybe you all can help. All of the knives are in excellent condition except the one that rusted real bad. I have the original.receipt from when he purchased this case and I also still have the key that locks the case. There are approximately 40 knives in this set and most of them are the red colored handles.

Welcome to AAPK. Glad to have you aboard. Just be patient. There's a guy here that's pretty well versed on Robeson. He'll find this thread sooner or later.

The one that is rusted real bad should be taken out of the display.
It could be a celluloid knife that is gassing. It could harm your other
knives.

WELCOME TO AAPK!!!!!

sorry i cant help ya....but again SOMEONE WILL BE ALONG SOON
may take a day err 2.......but the PRO'S will be around.

what a AWESOME DISPLAY! and knives too!!!!!
are there any knives in the boxes in the back?

and i think STOCKMAN is right...it looks like it is CELL and has began to GAS OUT pretty bad
it will or can.......ATTACK the others like a VIRUS ......it would be best to seperate that UNIT from the herd.
i have seen pics here of it eating a knife in two

again awesome display!

Welcome to AAPK Yes the yellow handle rusty knife needs to be removed and a search through the boxes for any others that are doing this should be done removing the bad apples as you go. You know, This display is from a time when there was an actual difference between .10, .25, .50, $1.05 lol these days you don't even care about the change and price difference is all dollars or $5's ... Very cool. I see a couple knives that I have on that board. from the 70's? I dunno but they're cool

Yes there 17 knives in the small boxes.

What do you plan on doing with them?

If you are keeping them, you will need to remove the knife with yellow handles that is out gassing, as others have suggested.

Very nice display, Charlie should be along shortly to fill you in on value

stockman wrote:The one that is rusted real bad should be taken out of the display.
It could be a celluloid knife that is gassing. It could harm your other
knives.

I agree!
That rusted yellow knife appears to be celluloid.
When celluloid decomposes or off-gasses, it releases sulfuric acid vapor, which will definitely harm all the other knives that are not stainless steel!

It should be removed from the case, the handles stripped off the knife so they cause no further damage to the knife. It may be possible to salvage the knife and replace the handles with yellow bone that won’t off-gas.

That's a nice display you've got I'd hang on to that!

Zach, consider this a response to your E-mails to me, as well.

That is a nice Robeson display case.

I agree with all the above advocating the removal of the little yellow handled knife that is rusted. The handles are deteriorating. I'd also recommend you remove the yellow handled toothpick fish knife and possibly the little white handled serpentine jack as well. Deteriorating celluloid tends to affect other celluloid. Out-gassing seems to be contagious.

I enlarged your photo on my computer and some of the Delrin handled knives appear to have been adversely affected by the out-gassing celluloid, most noticeably, the 622026 two blade jack.

When you take the board out of the cabinet, leave it out and allow the remaining knives to aerate for a few weeks before putting it back together. Leave the cabinet itself as open to the air as you can. Remove the glass, clean it thoroughly and leave the back door open. Remove the boxed knives from the cabinet and place them open in another room to aerate. Don't get the box tops mixed up. Examine those knives as well, but I suspect they are in little plastic sleeves that would have provided some protection.

Looking at the boxes, it appears as though you might have good replacements for the three celluloid handled knives I've ask you to remove. The 407 fish knife, the 822295 serpentine yellow handled jack and the 822850 white handled serpentine jack knife all have a corresponding box.

Whether there are knives to match is another story.

Your father might have bought the display from "Robeson Cutlery" in the 1970's, but he did not buy it from The Robeson Cutlery Company of Rochester and Perry, New York, as that original Robeson entity went out of business in 1965.

At that time the name "Robeson" was bought by a company called Cutler Federal and they contracted with Camillus Cutlery Co of Camillus, New York to make knives with the Robeson name on them.

I know the boxes in the back state Robeson Cutlery Company, Perry, New York, but those were left over boxes that were used in marketing the knives Cutler Federal had made. Notice there is no ZIP Code on the boxes. I think ZIP Codes were introduced in 1962.

Cutler Federal did produce old Robeson patterns, but they moved the pattern number that had always been on the back of the master blade to the front and changed the tang stamping from ROBESON / SHUREDGE / U. S. A. in three lines and block letters, to ROBESON / pattern number / U. S. A. in three lines and block letters. They dropped the traditional word, "ShurEdge" from the stamp.

Cutler Federal later sold the name to Ontario Knife company, owner of Queen Cutlery and they still own it.

I suspect most, if not all, the knives in your display have that later tang stamp. I do not see any red handled knives on the board that appear to be genuine strawberry bone. They all look like Delrin, a synthetic copy. Robeson did use strawberry Delrin from about 1960 to 1965, so it's possible that some of your knives date to that older time frame. If so, those will be your best knives and they will be marked with the ROBESON / SHUREDGE / U. S. A. mark.

I hope so.

Also, several of the knives on the board have long nail pulls on the master blade. Those were certainly not made by Robeson in Perry, NY, but by Camillus. Whether the knives with regular pulls are genuine Robeson knives I cannot say without seeing the tang stamps.

You might find that the knives in the boxes do not have the same type handles as the corresponding pattern on the board. That would not surprise me. Camillus used up the available supply, then went to a rather poor substitute.

"Robeson" marked knives from that post 1965 closure time period are not as desired, nor are they as valuable as the pre-1965 knives.

Having said that, I will tell you that I, myself, bought a similar case off Ebay a little while back that had inventory boxes containing more than forty knives. Plus, two of the knives on the board were pre-1960 knives with genuine strawberry bone handles and in mint condition.

Both the yellow handled knives on my display were out-gassing, so I removed them and stripped off and discarded the handles.

I paid $1500.00 for that display.

That might have been a fool's errand, as I've only been able to sell a handfull of the boxed knives and have come nowhere near recouping the investment. It was my intent to sell the loose knives, come as close to breaking even as possible and restore the display board, as there were sufficient knives in the storage compartment to do so, and keep it as part of my collection.

Maybe after I retire this year I can get down to some serious attempts to sell the remaing inventory knives.

I've created an AAPK Store for that purpose.

Charlie Noyes

I recently received this Camillus jack from ebay that looked pretty good except for the discoloration on the bolsters, as sign of celluloid off-gassing. (seller's picture) When I removed the handles I found cracks in both liners. When I restore the knife I will either use the liners from another knife with bad blades & good liners or I will make new liners from brass sheeting.
The blades and springs can be salvaged, but the liners of this knife are worthless.

I am posting these to show folks who are not familiar with the damage off-gassing celluloid can cause.
It is nothing to mess with!

He doesn't appear to have been very interested in a definitive answer to his question.

Charlie Noyes

Well Charlie, even if that's the case, many others are interested an appreciate your sharing your knowledge. I know that's certainly the way I feel.

Phil

Well, I kind of feel badly. He sent me three E-mails with the same photos a day or two before he posted it all to AAPK and I chose to answer here and I deleted his E-mails without responding to them.

I'm wondering if he didn't like the answer because it was contrary to what he had supposed the case and knives to be.

Charlie