All About Pocket Knives

i bought this boker on ebay today it is a usa boker treebrand with tree brand etched in the blade. the guy said it was purchased in the 70'. he said he thought it was stainless steel but i cant tell from these pics. i hope it is good carbon steel instead. do you guys think by the pics that its stainless or not?? i cant find any info on this knife and i would be grateful for any help i can get on this, such as age, quality, value? it has #8573 on the tang and usa boker on the other side and treebrand emblem on handle. thankx everybody!!!

In my oppinion it is carbon steel. I was mildly intested in USA BOKER knives a while back and put together a little bit of info on them. See This Link at my knife collection page for a litle bit of "starter info" on USA BOKER knives.

I feel fairly positive on the Carbon Steel. I dont have any real solid info to base this on, just from my "very basic experience" with the Bokers. I have a few bokers that are not on my site and handled several. Normally any Soligen Stainless will say this on the blade. The older USA BOKER knives will not have a "solingen" word stamped anywhere but the steel was still bought from their cousins in Germany.

Often you will see "German Stainless" on a knife and even "Solingen" but I find there are degrees of quality in solingen steel. There is always someone who wants to capture the selling power of a name without doing the foundation work it requires. Boker is a good name knive, but you will find some of what I call miss-matching. A good steel knife with a cheap handle material or poor quality craftmanship. A Boker made a few years ago, was far far better than MOST of them made today.

My latest confusion:
Some "Bokers are stamped with Armenia"
Im told...Argentina in spanish is spelled Armenia <-unsure
Maps say Armenia is in Europe near Turkey and Russia. Maybe some Argentina made bokers are using name Armenia on them to reflect german made steel, but this seems unlikely since Armenia is not near Germany at all.

You can see some of the "Rocket Science" it requires to get accurate info on a Boker! Judge a Boker by holding it in your hand and using it. In my oppinion theyre not worth collecting for value increase, only for the novelty or chalendge. There are some good made ones, and make excellent working knives. I steer clear of the "Magnum" name like the plague however. I could go on and on on the Boker, but it tends to confuse and frustrate me more as I go. LOL

Lets see... wheres that Case Peanut I got last? LOL

would you think this is one of the better ones made? do you think it would be a quality knife? thanks for your info!

ikeybmg,

Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell the quality of a particular knife by looking at a picture. You can't feel the walk and talk, or the fine particulars of fit and finish.
We can only speculate that Boker is known for making a nice knife, in general. Every manufacturer makes good...and sometimes not so good...examples, and the knife companies don't seem to be much different. JMO, of course.

Hawke,

I believe that the word you are thinking of is Alemania, rather than Armenia, it means Germany in Spanish. It is on the knives Boker makes for export to Spanish speaking countries. A friend from Mexico, in another forum, once mentioned this in a post. But, if you have one that does say Armenia, I'd like to see a picture if possible. That would be a new one on me.

Bill

i mean just a basis of quality on this particular type of knife?

Thx Bill. I remebered that name wrong didnt I LOL Boy I spent some wasted time looking up maps LOL


ikeybmg

At the pics yove given Its hard to tell exactly what kind of handles. Often Boker does a really good job of making plastic look like bone in pics, so in this case I assume plastic if I cant tell for sure. I cant see the shield real well.

Its a good working knife to me tho, but doesnt fit my "collector" type for me. I would bid $15 and let it fly. It would be worth a tad more prolly, it looks like it never been sharpened.

Again, however its a "high quality steel working knife"

aight cool, i got it for like 20.oo plus 3 shipping....so i should hope for the best on the bone..right?...lol...but when i get it ill post some really closeup pics of the knife...thanks.