All About Pocket Knives

i have a case knife that i was confused about the tang stamp and the dating of the knife. to start, this is a case xx red bone lock back knife please see picture.
anyway, i recently joined the case collectors club and got some information thru the mail...booklets, etc, and one of the items i got thru the mail was a page that featured all of the different case tang stampings thru the eras. if you will notice, the tang stamp on this knife is a little odd compared to other stampings. so, i was looking up the knife pictured and saw that this stamp was used only during 1997-1999, so i was confused because as you can see in the picture, this knife has 5 dots on it and couldnt have been made during 1997-99. i emailed shirley boser at case directly. at first she informed me of just what i had read, that the tang stamp was used only during the 1997-1999 years and asked me for a picture of the knife and tang stamp, so i emailed them to her and after seeing them and checking them out, she informed me that their information on that type of tang stamp was incorrect and that there was room for another dot on the tang which meant that the stamp had to have started in 1994 and was used thru 1999 and that, that particular stamping with the floating dots, i guess you would call it was used during that time on this pattern knife.

not a cliff hanger story, but i did learn something new about this pattern knife and so did case in reguards to the years the stamp was used and the information they had on this knife. just thought it was interesting and that i would share it with you all here.

steve

Thanks for sharing this. I'm not a Case guy, but do see a few. This may help me or somebody else down the road.

Hi Steve. Thanks for that... it is very useful information. I have a 97 that uses that dot system but now we know that the range of use was wider than everyone thought. s-k

your welcome guys. i had wondered and debated on what i thought the date was and was also curious about the dots being like they are and what the purpose was. anyway, glad i found out and maybe this will be of help to someone else too.

steve

Just to add a little more info from 1990 to 1993 case stamped the date then moved to the dot system

I cant figure that one out....five dots with the "lightning s" would indicate a 1985 tang stamp. The problem is, that knife was not part of the Case line until 1989 whan Parker owned Case....its one of several "Parker USA" patterns that he brought over to Case. Definitely a puzzle....

Here's another "floating" five dot I have been wondering about since I got it. It is a 5165 1/2 SS.

thats what i originally thought, was that knife was a 1985 but looking thru my book, i didnt see one for that year and thats when i started to think it was a 1995 and emailed case. to my understanding, the floating dots were used only during 1994-1999 was what shirley boser at case told me, but who knows, if they didnt know about mine, there may be another out there...lol.

great looking stag knife. if its a 5 dot with the floating dots, it wouldve been made in 1995 as well.

anyway, i have another with the floating dots, but it only has one dot, 1999 stag lock back 51225LSS. i wasnt confused by this one because it has the case xx shield on it that was only used during the 90s era, i believe.

steve

The thing is, I thought that all of the 1990's knives after early 1993 (whn they dropped the CASE BRADFORD with year stamp) would have the long tail C stamp with the dots....that shield with the CASE XX is definitley from 1996-1999.