All About Pocket Knives

Hello! I am new here...not really a knife person (sorry)...but I have several pocket knives from family members in the past. I am in the process of listing some on Ebay, but I have one in particular for which I cannot find any information. It has a swastika symbol on it but the only markings it has besides that is U.S.A. stamped on the blade. I tend to think this is not the German Nazi swastika because nobody in my family was a Nazi sympathizer. (Then again, you never know where something really came from or why someone owns it.) I know that the swastika had a more benign meaning before Hitler got a hold of it, but not sure this knife would be that old. Does anyone have any information on this knife? Thanks in advance.

Pretty sure that is a NAZI swastika and not Native American or any middle eastern symbology. I’m guessing it was a sfo or an individual had printed it on there himself.

Riley_Jackson1776 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 9:04 pm Hello.....

Going by the tang stamp, it looks like a COLONIAL made pocket knife.
Probably made WITHOUT the swastika.
Please post it here also.
viewtopic.php?t=59829

WWII "commemorative" knife, probably made by Colonial as others have stated. I don't think eBay would let you sell it there.

But to AAPK!

BFORSE wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 9:54 pm Pretty sure that is a NAZI swastika and not Native American or any middle eastern symbology. I’m guessing it was a sfo or an individual had printed it on there himself.

sfo??

Yes, either an sfo (special factory order), or maybe someone took them elsewhere for the print job.

SFO stands for Special Factory Order. Most cutleries will make a knife for a business, individual, or club if they order at least a minimum quantity. These are called special factory orders. However there are some limits on what most cutleries will make, which includes not marking with politically incorrect or offensive embellishment. Most knives having such symbols are done “aftermarket”, meaning the knife was altered after leaving the factory.

Ken

Welcome to AAPK! I hope you enjoy hanging out with us!
I agree with what has been said - the knife is neither old nor collectible, except to a few people with whom you probably would not want to do business.
EBay will probably not allow it, and the value would be so low as to not make it worth the effort anyway, with or without the symbol.
I would probably either dispose of it, or put it away and use it for a rare conversation piece to discuss bad elements of history, and how it should be remembered without being revered. We do want to remember some things so that they will not be repeated.

Not everyone who owned something with a swastika on it was a Nazi sympathizer. That kind of stuff used to be fairly common, I'm sure anyone over the age of 50 or so can remember seeing those Hitler Youth daggers advertised in the back of respectable outdoor magazines. They were looked on as curiosities, not as any kind of approval.

The swastika makes people uncomfortable nowadays, there are lot of reasons for that. There may well be no more to its history than some guy saying, "Hey, a knife!"

dsutton24 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 17, 2023 1:05 am Not everyone who owned something with a swastika on it was a Nazi sympathizer. That kind of stuff used to be fairly common, I'm sure anyone over the age of 50 or so can remember seeing those Hitler Youth daggers advertised in the back of respectable outdoor magazines. They were looked on as curiosities, not as any kind of approval.

The swastika makes people uncomfortable nowadays, there are lot of reasons for that. There may well be no more to its history than some guy saying, "Hey, a knife!"

True. It was probably made so that people would buy it "just for the heck of it", or as a conversation piece.
Then of course there are others, NOT like this knife, that are made as counterfeit "Nazi" knives.
There are a lot of different reasons that they were made and bought.

Thanks to all! I appreciate all the comments/opinions. I figured it would not be worth much anyway, so I won't be selling it. I had a shoebox with a lot of knives belonging to my late uncle. A handful were worth selling and this was the last one to figure out what to do with. It was way too much work to try and research these knives, though. I usually like to know something about what I'm selling but I know next to nothing about knives! I did get a little education! Thanks again.

If you want to be rid of it you could take it to a gun show, somebody there would probably buy it just for the curiosity factor. Or you could scrape off the imprint and just use the thing to open dogfood bags.

Such knives were made in great numbers at one time, KKK knives included.

I’ve seen boxes of them.

They are curiosity knives. Folks would buy them at one time, not so much today.

Judging from all the people protesting against Israel lately, it might sell for a premium.

ken98k wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 2:45 am Judging from all the people protesting against Israel lately, it might sell for a premium.

If I had a case of them, I would try and set up a stand and sell them on any Ivy league university campus in the US, between the professors and the students there would be a fight over them as they got close to selling out in a few minutes...

Or you might get more money on Capitol Hill these days... from the "Tweets" I've seen ...