Steven....
Here's a little information straight from the Blog of a Great Eastern Distributor....
"Until very recently, the Prototypes were retained by GEC and you'd see them show up at Knife Show's when Ken or Ryan would be set up. As a result, unless you were lucky enough to go to a show and meet these two, you probably didn't have a clue the Prototypes were out there! So let me offer up a very brief history.
By Great Easterns own admission, when they started up in 2006 precise record keeping wasn't their primary focus. They wanted to build a high quality knife and I have a feeling they didn't have a clue what was going to happen in the collector market as far as their knives were concerned.
Now, I'm not so much implying that Great Eastern didn't know what all they were making, the shortfall came in that they weren't real good about disseminating that information to the collectors. I believe it was in early 2008 that GEC started listing the Production totals on their website.
You can check the production totals and see the serialized and unserialized totals. The breakdown in handle materials, serial number and unnumbered knives, Factory Test Production runs, etc was available in their production totals list. This was a huge tool for the collector to have access to. One problem, the Prototypes haven't been listed. *(see note at bottom)
In 2008 something else changed as well. They started running Prototype knives. From early 2008 to about June of 2009, 2 Prototypes were made of the GEC knives with some exceptions. All of these knives included a Certificate of Authenticity, with the earlier ones signed by Ken Daniels. By the way, if anyone has any knowledge or a Prototypes issued prior to 2008, I'd sure like to hear about it.
In June of 2009 they started limiting Prototype production to just 1 per knife/handle/blade configuration. The Proto's were also normally only marked if the balance of the run was serialized. By mid '09, the Certificate of Authenticity was also changed to be consistent in appearance with the COA's that they had started to include with the serialized knives.
The Prototype is the first knife produced in a run. The blade receives a special "Prototype" etch and a Certificate of Authenticity is included with the knife. If it's an earlier Proto and 2 knives were run, the COA will indicate it is 1 of 2. When they cut production to a single Prototype, they dropped the "1 of .." as it is the only one.
Worth noting, is there is typically NOT a Prototype made for every knife and handle material combo made. This will occur for a number of reasons. In the case of expensive or rare handle materials such as Genuine Stag, Mammoth Ivory, etc, it will be somewhere beyond rare to ever see a Proto. Many of the short runs will not have a Proto, but there are definitely some exceptions!!!
There are a lot of knives floating around in collector circles with a Prototype blade etch. In too many cases, the exact number of Prototypes isn't stated. Frequently, other than the blade etch, there's no documentation offered with the knife to establish how many knives were marked Prototype. I really have to give Great Eastern a great deal of credit for limiting the Prototypes to 2 knives early on and now just a single Proto.
The Prototype represents a unique piece in any collection. It's the first off the line. It's been documented as being exactly that. At most, there may be 2 of the early one's, but later releases are one of a kind.
This is some what edited..for the full version
http://blog.tsaknives.com/2010/12/01/gec-prototypes--worth-collecting.aspx
