The one knife that gets the most battering and abuse is a really cheap made in China three blade no name. It’s held up over several years of torture.
The point is, you can get a very usable knife for a very low price if you aren’t hung up on it’s brand or origin. My idea of overpriced would be any knife that costs more but holds up less well than my trashy old work knife!
Zoogirl, you've stumbled on the unspoken and ugly truth of the whole thing; that it doesn't matter what kind of knife you have, or what it's made of, or even what country it's from. This forum is made of of people who are knife nuts. The means they are the 1% of the worlds population that obsess over knives to the point that the rest of the world thinks we're weird. And in truth they are right to some degree.
Knife nuts, like car nuts, flashinght nuts, and other obsessive hobbyists many times go totally over board that it is a bit neurotic. Do we really need a car that will go 150 miles per hour to run down to the store for a quart of milk or commute to work at 50 mph? Or a flashlight with umpteen zillion lumens that will sear the retinas our of a raccoons eyes at 800 yards, just to find the way to the circuit breaker box in a thunderstorm when the lights go out?
The truth is, all those knives we love to collect are just like all those fishing lures that fill the isle at the store. They are made to catch the dollars from a fisherman wallet instead of fish. Your cheap little Chinese three blade no name is a shinning example of what the whole rest of the world functions with. I believe Jeff Randall was totally correct when he said in an interview that most the knife market is BS. Heres from an interview he did;
Quote [IW: What trends are currently influencing the knife market?
JR: "In all honesty, the knife industry is about 99 percent bullshit. We sell knives every day to people who will never use them. Knife buying is more of a want than a need.
I grew up on a farm carrying a three-bladed "Old timer" pocketknife. It did everything I needed and got used daily. All these new weird shapes and designs that keep coming out are made just to have something new and "tacticool." Most companies refuse to speak the truth and just say, "the reason we designed this is because some mall ninja would think it's cool and spend money on it."
Once you get in the real world of knife use, whether it's butchering a deer or building a fire, you will see that a simple, basic knife design is all that's really needed to perform the task."]
So I guess any knife that costs more than some Old Timer or Mora is a rip off. If you want to collect knives for the sake of collecting knives, thats fine. But do so with the realization that just because you have a 200 dollar knife in your pocket you are no better equipped than some working guy with a 30 dollar Case stockman in his pocket. The cheaper knife will cut a piece of rope, open a box, open a plastic blister package, slice an apple, strip some wire, or whittle a perfect hot dog stick for the grandkid just as good. That piece of rope, or card board box won't know or care its been cut with a 10 dollar Mora or a 200 dollars whiz bang of a tacticool folder.
Spend what you like because you collect knives and are obsessed over them. But don't kid yourself that you're really getting a better knife for the job. When it comes to cutting, any decent knife will do. 20 or 30 bucks will get you a very good knife for everyday use in the real world. But then we're the obsessed and afflicted knife nuts. We're the ones that will spend money on a knife that the rest of the world thinks is totally nuts. And they are right. We are.