It was a good knife day, score for the day, an engraved Connecticut Shotgun Galazan Sidelock folder. Stopped at a flea market and ran through real quick. I found a table of knives from a collector/accumulator who was askin' stupid prices for Chinese knives. Looked like he bought one of those dealer boxes from what's his name on late night/early morning tv and was askin' the MSRP which was 50X what it was worth. He had every wannabe biker and bada** buyin' like crazy from him.
On the far end was a box full of old colonials and cheap US made tin shell knives, Chinese SAKs and the usual garbage you see in such places. I tried striking up a conversation but he kept talkin' down to me like he was all the wannabes. At one point he said the one thing you should never say to me, He told me I didn't know a good knife when I saw it. I tried again and he dismissed my comments as those of an uneducated knife wannabe user/collector.
I was just about to leave when I saw this with a $30 tag on it, I talked him down to $10, (I think he just wanted to get rid of me) he looked at the knife and said he didn't recognize the name and said it was probably from Pakistan and he'd take $10. I knew lookin' at it that it was worth more than I paid, I could see the marks from the engraver's tools on it, it was hand engraved and although it wasn't Ray Cover's level of work nonetheless there was a lot of work went into it.
He was an idiot and as I left I pulled out the large Ebony inlay Sebenza 21 and cut the string off the price tag and before I left, he told me he can get me all kinds of Sebenza s for $50 each. I shook my head, pocketed my new treasure and left him to wallow in his ignorance.
This is a web shot of what I got, I'll post some real pics later.
ETA, after closer inspection I stand corrected, both sides are identically engraved so I'm fairly sure it was laser engraved and then run uncertainty a surface grinder to bring out the highlights. Still for what I paid for it, I'm thrilled.
Here's a pic I took.
