All About Pocket Knives

Is it just me, but has the price of knives gone way up?

It’s not just you and it’s not just knives. If you can name one item that hasn’t increased in price then you know something that I don’t.

You are correct Rick, my wife just got back from buying this weeks grocery's and yes prices are higher. Some say the price on certain items have come back down but not very many items according to the receipt I just looked at. As far as the price on knives goes I'm sure the name brand companies have increased a little but when I look at the prices in the secondary markets I have to ask myself are we crazy? Oh well, you can't buy a dime coke anymore or go to McDonalds and get change back on a dollar bill. Everything goes up, except my income.

11% inflation will do that.

I used to mow a lawn for a buck, go to town and get a candy bar for a nickel, a coke for 8 cents, a comic book for a dime, a loaf of bakery bread was 22 cents, gas a quarter, and a new pu truck was around 1400 bucks. A new VW Bug was $999.99.. My kids knock down around 100 grand today, welder/fitter and a game commission game lands manager. Bought a 25 acre farm for $4500. I mean, today. 175 bucks for a top quality knife just dont seem like much?? recall when ya could live OK on the interest on 1 million bucks? I bet bill Howard isnt livin any higher than when his blades wer sellin for 75 bucks.

henry1 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 3:29 pm Is it just me, but has the price of knives gone way up?

I remember when gas was $ 0.29 a gallon (and retail "gas wars" as low as $.09). A loaf of bread was 10 cents, and I hauled hay for 2 cents a bale. So knife prices have increased also, and somehow that is surprising?

Ken

Gonna show my age, but when I was a kid me and my buddies would swing by the new houses in our neighborhood and pick up bottles of pop left behind by the builders and run em to the convenience store and get a dime a piece for the returns, $0.52 would get me a pack of smokes and for a buck or so more a respectable Lunch from Mickey D’s. No, not 1940’s, was in the 80’s!!

Tinpanva wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 9:36 pm…..was in the 80’s!!

that was nearly a half a century ago

Ha! That’s funny! ^^^^

One night my wife and I were looking on Netflix trying to pick out a movie. We were looking in the “Classics” category.

She saw a movie she was familiar with and said ”How could that be a classic? It was made in my lifetime”.

We looked at each other and she knew right away what she had just said.

bestgear wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 10:25 pm

Tinpanva wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 9:36 pm…..was in the 80’s!!

that was nearly a half a century ago

YYW! LOL

You're spot on Henry ... my frame of reference is Case knives, not vintage Cases, but post 1980 Case's. I got into the collecting hobby maybe 10 years ago now. I can confidently say used prices have practically doubled just in one decade. I used to get so many steal deals on eBay, it was great and really appealed to the bottomfeeder side of me. I haven't gotten what I would consider a deal in several years. I have completely lost interest in paying $65-75 for a nice clean used knife that I'm used to paying $35-45 for not that long ago, just pre-pandemic. I still foot the bill very rarely for something I have to have ... but the dramatic increase in a relatively short time has taken the fun out it completely for me. What confounds me is collectors are not pushing back and are willing to pay the asking prices today ...

I can think of no other commodity that has DOUBLED in price in one decade. I'm sure somebody will come up with an example or two, but it's not common, and way above any rational inflation rate increase over as many years.

My first car 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible $2975 including tax and gas was 25 cents

Fingers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 12:38 pm My first car 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible $2975 including tax and gas was 25 cents

If you still had it in garage condition, that's a $30 - $40,000 car I bet.

1967redrider wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 12:55 pm

Fingers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 12:38 pm My first car 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible $2975 including tax and gas was 25 cents

If you still had it in garage condition, that's a $30 - $40,000 car I bet.

The biggest word in the English language “if”

Fingers wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 12:38 pmMy first car 1964 Chevrolet Impala convertible $2975 including tax

If a lump sum of $2,975 had been invested in the S&P 500 at the beginning of 1964 and all dividends were automatically reinvested, it would be worth approximately $1.4 million today…..sadly, cars are almost always a depreciating asset.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average wage for U.S. workers in 1980 was just under $7 an hour. The average wage today in 2026 is just over $34 an hour. That’s about a 5X increase. Proportionally a knife that cost $20 in 1980 should be about $100 today.

I didn’t check it but I suspect the cost of steel, brass, stag, bone, etc is similarly higher today also. (If you can even get it at all.) We can complain , and eventually if enough folks stop buying the product companies will either reduce prices or go bankrupt, their workers will be laid off or out of a job, etc. That's how it works.
Unfortunately a lot of folks don't think about things that way. We want lower prices and higher wages.

Ken