All I want for Christmas is a musty old Catalog...

[Robo]

Determined to make a new historical discovery of some sort in 2019-- something to make the whole vintage pocket knife community stand up and go "Yay!"--I put old wholesale hardware catalogs on my wish list. Not trusting my family, I went rogue and ordered a couple myself--just in case. Got the first today, The Thompson-Diggs Company #40. All in all its about 15 pounds of "Yawn" having only two pocket knife brands "Universal" (LF&C) and--bet you'll never guess!--Remington. Seriously, what "Big Book of Pocket Knives" type book (I got 'em all) DOESN'T have fifty pages of Remington knives? Only The BBoPKs Has the LF&C Toothpicks listed (5" and 5.5") so its nice seeing one in this catalog but, honestly I was expecting a lot more. And what the heck do you do with these monsters once you got them? My nose is already begining to itch from all the mildew hidden in the the electrical socket section...man, when did I become such a grinch?

[Mumbleypeg]

I enjoy those old catalogs, mostly for the knives and sporting goods but there's a lot of interesting and obsolete old tools and various other goods that have passed from modern day use or popularity.

It also has been interesting to me to look back on the differing marketing and merchandising strategies of 20th century cutlery companies. As you pointed out, Remington heavily used print media advertising, like mail order catalogs and magazine advertising. "If you like this knife see your Remington retailer or mail $.75 to Remington.........." Remington also offered well done in-store retail displays to their retail outlets.

Case, on the other hand rarely used print advertising (which is why you find so little of it today) but produced detailed well illustrated catalogs and beautiful solid cherry point-of-sale display cabinets, and deployed a network of company sales reps who called on retail outlets (independent hardware, sporting goods, pharmacies, etc) to get those displays deployed and re-filled - the "shoe leather" marketing approach. Company salesmen carried rolls filled with samples to show the retail store buyers, and left those catalogs so they could re-order stock.

Large hardware wholesalers like Simmons, Shapleigh's, and retailers Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward and others had their own in-house brands, mostly outsource manufactured. Along with in-store point-of-sale displays accordingly.

Schrade, Camillus, Imperial, Ulster, Utica and others deployed mostly smaller (less elaborate than Case) point-of-sale displays, prolifically deployed almost everywhere there was a cash register. Hardware stores, gas stations, drug stores, dime stores, etc.

That's how I remember it - my perceptions anyway. Those are generalities, not absolutes, as there were a mixture of those used by some companies.

[markpreston]

Cool stuff. I’m looking for a used copy of Steven pfiefers book on case knives and Bernard Levine’s guide to knives on the secondary market. I love staring at the old artist renderings drawn by hand in those old books

[Robo]

Mark: Good choices! Those are two must-haves that you should be able to find fairly easily. In case you don't know, get the 4th edition of Levine's as supossedly the later editions are pale imitations of the original.

Ken: Nice work breaking the sales approaches down. I'm Copying it for future reference. I agree there's actually a ton of cool stuff to look at in this monster; I just have to get over the fact--after reading your post--that I probably need to stick to the Biggest Wholesalers if I want to avoid seeing Remington and Universal over and over.

I guess I'd like to see if it's possible to find patterns somewhere that I haven't seen listed in the go-to books and reproduction catalogs we all end up owning. Maybe it's not possible but I guess my aim is to find out. For example I own "The Knife Makers who Moved West" It has a bunch of catalog pages that are helpful enough, but there are a number of Western States toothpicks that came out roughly during or just after WWII but before 1950 or whenever they became Western. These aren't in the book and I've never seen them anywhere else either. "Sargents" Has a picture of long pull version of the truly sweet toothpick ("fishermans knife") that was a Western States original pattern and not The Challenge Cut Cos or Utica's they contracted early on. Plus there were a number of contracted toothpicks they put out during the period when they were already manufacturing their own version (A Ka-Bar "Pirate Switch" for instance). I've yet to find these in a catalog of any type. I'm not content just owning these knives or finding examples of them in the Worth Point archives. The goal for me is to find them in a catolog so I can have the thrill of saying "Boom--there it is!" Hope this makes sense...I guess seeing them in a catalog inserts them into an historical context for me. so I just don't own a knife that might as well have floated up out of the ether.

Ive seen a couple Cattaraugus Ticklers documented in the repro catalogs (though not in Bruce Voyles' book) but never this awesome variation on the form

[Mumbleypeg]

I guess the moral is "you can never have too many reference books"! I too like the old catalogs, and have quite a few Case catalogs or reprints, and a couple of Remington catalog reprints. There are several older threads here about references. Here's a link to one of the more comprehensive threads viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42388&hilit=Reference+books.

Warning! If you like knife reference books, that thread may cause hyperventilation!

Ken

[knife7knut]

I have a Bingham's Hardware #34 that weighs about the same and was given to me by a good friend who was cleaning out his barn. Sadly there wasn't any knives to go a long with it but the illustrations in the book were good.

[kootenay joe]

I think there are many brands that have pattern variations not shown in the reference books. Old department store catalogs like Sears and catalogs for hardware supply businesses is where you can find basic patterns with some change not shown in reference books. For example the Craftsman knives were mostly made by Camillus but might have a different blade choice or blade arrangement.
The challenge is finding them. Sears had i believe 4 major catalogs per year, each about 1200 or more pages, but only 2 or 3 will show their knives.
No one could buy all of the issues of all the old catalogs that have knives in them. But it is fun to buy a few and check out the knives within. The artists' drawings are detailed and accurate and the descriptions have more details like "milled liners", etc.
You might find a pattern variation not shown in your reference books.
kj

[danno50]

I would love to have some of the older Simmons Hardware Co catalogs, particularly the pre 1923 ones. However, any that come up on ebay, or anywhere else on the internet, are asking in the hundreds of dollars for them.

[wlf]

Knife Album by Col. Mayes has a great variety of patterns and makers. I recommend, not that expensive.