All About Pocket Knives

I was chatting with another AAPK member this morning and I told him a story that I had been told about how a guy over here got his hands on some NOS from Solingen. He had a whole huge pile of NOS knives from a number of good brands. (I guess 100-150 knives from watching him sell them off. ) Problem was, he was in a big hurry to sell because he wanted the money for a car so he sold them off faster than I could save up money to buy them. I wanted to send some knives to the states and I thought it would be cool if they were matching knives so for this reason, I concentrated all my funds & efforts on just one brand & model. Carl Rader Solingen MOP pen knives. I managed to get my hands on 5 of them. Four of which now reside in America.

Anyways, as I was telling the story, the thought occurred, that this guy's idea he had, about how to get NOS knives, could work just about anywhere in the world. So here it is. :

"NOS STORY": I found a guy over here once who had a bunch of NOS knives from Solingen. I got to chatting back & forth with him on eBay so I asked him how he got them. He said that he & a friend had gotten a list of stores & companies from in & around Solingen. Then they took a vacation together in Solingen and just drove around looking for knife stores, Mom & Pop stores, department stores, cutlery stores, knife factories ect. that had long "Gone out of Business". They actually ran across a few stores that had been closed long ago but the buildings were still there. They were just abandoned. Then they did some asking and calling around and managed to get in contact with the owners of the buildings and the rest you can think. They talked a couple of the owners into coming by and letting them have a look inside and they bought up all the NOS knives they could get there hands on. It was a good idea IMO. Anyways, that's the story I was told.

I thought I would share this story & who knows, maybe some other AAPK member reading this little story, knows of some old store where they might be able to buy some NOS. Remember to think outside the box. It could be an old gas station, bait store, gun store, fishing store, antike store, hardware store, Mom & Pop store ect. ect. Ya just never know where you might come across some NOS pocket knives just waiting to be found. And asking is free.

I know there are a couple-few True Value stores in my area that stock Case knives, so that might be a good place to start. Thanks for sharing the story, Tom, and some nice knives, too!

I consider myself fortunate to have one of those Carl Rader pearl pens. Several years ago, an auction house was selling Keen Kutter knives and goods yearly in large quantities. They could have been old hardware store finds for all I know.

Tom, those knives are sweet!

Nice knives Tom!

Years ago I visited many independent mom-and-pop hardware, sporting goods, department stores, even drug stores, and found older NOS knives still in their inventory, which I bought for the then current retail prices. That was 40-50 years ago. They rarely if ever “rotated” their stock, they just let customers pick the knife they liked from the stock on hand. Unfortunately those days in small town USA are gone, put out of business by “big box stores” and more recently on-line retailers.

When the small independent retailers closed up shop they usually had “going out of business” sales where they sold everything including the shelves and display cases. If you happened to catch one of those sales in progress you might find some cutlery bargains. I managed to acquire a few “gems”. Unfortunately most of those opportunities are extinct now too but occasionally you can still get lucky.

Long story to explain why I’m skeptical nowadays of “NOS warehouse find” claims. That and there seemed to be an inordinate number of them when Jim Parker was around. Seems like at the time there was at least one such claim in every SMKW catalog!

Ken