Real and fake knives

parkertelmo

parkertelmo

Joined
Oct 28, 2011
Messages
415
Alright fellow blade enthusiasts, we've got BIG trouble in little CHINA town:

I have loved knives my entire life. My growing interest(obsession) has slowly lead me to buying only what I believe are the best knives. But recently I found out about the giant world of chinese copies and the actual extent of how amazingly hard it can be to spot these fakes. If you check out AliExpress.com or Chineseknives.com you will see countless Hinderers, Striders, Emersons, Benchmades, and many other high end knife manufacturers I even found a Busse!!! And every single one was a complete and udder fake made EXACTLY to scale. you can see some videos on youtube of comparisons, its crazy how close they are to the real ones and they only cost between $15-$200! Sounds great right... WRONG! These copies define the low of low. To me not only do they take food from the mouths of the hard working Americans children that had the ingenuity and work ethic to produce the real ones but they are budget in every way. The steals used and other materials are guaranteed to let you down when you need them most. To me a knife is something that I will count my life on to perform if need be. These knives are like if you purchased a colt 1911 and found when you were being attacked by a 500lb bear that it was a chinese airsoft gun. It hurts me even more to see them being sold as the real deal. I have found some on ebay already and not just the super cheesy obvious fakes but full on SMF double GG's, here is one : [Live Ebay Link Removed] I am 99% sure this is a fake. the way I can tell is the blade looks stripped of the cheap paint on the fakes, screw color is off, and the hinderer lock bar looks painted and not colored through heating. also the mini choil past the working choil is smaller and more angled because it does not hit g10 inside the handle but another pin when the blades is collapsed into the handle. I could be wrong but I have an SMF and have done a ton of research on this stuff and it looks fake to me. I dono if I am the only one who this is new to but I think everyone should be very informed because it has the potential to ruin what we love for about knives. I don't mind spending a good amount on hardcore American made knives, I DO mind spending a dollar on chinese copies.
What do you guys n gals think?
 
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I think something needs to be done about all of this knife counterfeiting in China. Also, people need to stop passing them off as the real deal. I saw a crappy fake Benchmade on eBay that the (U.S.) seller claimed was authentic. I contacted him about it and he said he actually "didn't know" if it was real. It still sold for nearly $50.
 
I have started purchasing alot of knives from this forum - Busse/swamprat. I hope none of these are fakes!!! I don't think I could tell the difference yet....I try to stay away from ebay for most things just because of the widespread counterfeits. If you purchase a DVD from e-bay you are almost for sure asking for a bootleg copy. I have a few to prove it. Even got suckered into a windows 7 DVD that looked amazingly real except that the hologram was taped on- not integral with the dvd.
 
Well if you know enough of the knife in question and believe it to be a fake, report it as counterfeit. Believe it or not Ebay does not play around with forgeries. If someone sees it and reports it they investigate it and will remove the auction. I've had my auctions flagged when I sold off all my airsoft stuff. One of my guns wasn't stamped HK and they pulled the auction and threatened to suspend my account if I relisted it. But they can't do anything if it isn't reported.
 
Hey Parker, good post you got here.

I agree one hundred percent, and I'm glad you pointed it out.

Like crowmagon said, if you can spot them, report them as forgeries.

Good to talk to you again.

Moose
 
good post, I agree with all that has been said, but I don't think you can post current auctions on Ebay. See if you can just take the pics off of it and post here.
 
Counterfit, not fake. A fake knife would be something that looks like a knife but isn't.

You can bitch all you want, but the current administration is scared of China; they're not going to finally find a set of balls over knock-offs.
 
You can report all the fake Buck, Spyderco, Kershaw fakes til you are blue in the face, they still stay up.
 
Magnaminous_G said:
Brothers, let me tell you... ain't jack gonna be done about it.
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Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. Fakes will always be around no matter what and that's just the sad truth. Although, I am 99% sure the SMF in the link is not one of them. Just looks like and older generation version to me. The finish has been sanded or otherwise stripped though. The lock bar stabilizer is heat treated...definitely not painted and also has the correct Hinderer stamp on it. I don't think you have done quite enough research. ;)
 
I can totally understand your point of view, these days some Chinese copies of famous brands are difficult to recognize as such and this is a serious issue. Some people even say that it is great to have good copies, you don't have to buy the real ones in terms of performance and you save a lot of money. I cannot convince these people to go for the real deal and buy a Strider for example, but I will continue to buy my Bokers, Kershaws, Spydercos and so on from the knife shops and fellow knife enthusiasts I trust and will explain it to all those who might listen to me. Maybe they think twice about about buying a copy.
 
counterfeiting is gunna happen , so is ripping off designs and using them .. so is people hitting on married folk .. so is ripping off cars , so is .. the list goes on .

its just folk living up to , or down to the standards they was raised to , dont sweat it , its not gunna get better .
 
I think this thread is necessary and good to discuss, but any and all links and urls should be deleted from the OP and other posts. No need to help the counterfeiters. I am a huge fan of Chinese-produced knives, but for the most part I only buy original designs from China and not ones that are direct copies. I think that's the ethical thing to do, and I think what we're starting to see is US-based companies having good designs made in China with good QC (for example the Spyderco Tenacious or Kershaw Cryo) which complement their US-produced designs. I expect the Chinese ones will continue to improve in the future, but the design work coming out of the US is just way ahead of indigenous Chinese designs with a few exceptions. I consider it like the electronics indusry: let the design and development of the iPad/iPhone/etc. happen in the US and the production overseas. Of course high-end knives will still be produced in the US, and some mid-end ones as well.

I'm probably one of the few people here who reads Russian knife forums but the chinese copies are very popular over there, mostly because people can't afford the originals (an XM-18 is a couple months' salary!).
 
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Nope. Nothing gets deleted. It's a good thread and a good topic. We need to talk about these things. As long as it's done with civility — which it has been here — it's all good.
 
Well I don't think we should be posting actual store urls, just as we don't do that even for US-made knives.

I do think Enlan and Sanrenmu knives are great value and do not outright copy/counterfeit for the most part. Indeed the only copies you see among those are for example the CRKT Drifter which Sanrenmu has a "copy" of, but I'm pretty sure that's because they actually produce the Drifter for CRKT and so they also produce unmarked ones for the internal domestic market. Those two brands put their own branding on the knives as well.

Then you have Ganzo/Navy which make knives that are direct copies (or nearly copies) but with their own branding. This is worse than original designs, but still not the worst. There are also higher-end Chinese copies of Striders, XM-18's, that fall into this middle category. These are aimed at people that appreciate the high end knives but can't afford to drop $400 on a sebenza, strider, etc.

The worst is the outright copiers that produce exactly copies with the original branding. These are counterfeits and are obviously intended to be sold to people who pay the actual MSRP of the authentic price without knowing they are counterfeits.

I think the challenge for people as purchases is to stick to that first category of original designs that are inspired by Western influences.
 
eisman said:
You can bitch all you want, but the current administration is scared of China; they're not going to finally find a set of balls over knock-offs.
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I don't think the current administration has a thing to do with it.
China has been counterfeiting for a long time, and will continue no matter the administration.
 
DrOpPoInT1110 said:
Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. Fakes will always be around no matter what and that's just the sad truth. Although, I am 99% sure the SMF in the link is not one of them. Just looks like and older generation version to me. The finish has been sanded or otherwise stripped though. The lock bar stabilizer is heat treated...definitely not painted and also has the correct Hinderer stamp on it. I don't think you have done quite enough research. ;)
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Good eye yes it looks like an oldie to me too. Good thread and yes i hate all this fake crap myself. Why the hell don't they just make their own stuff and designs you know. I read where their unemployment is a little over 2% and their building all over the place. So yeah all our money is going into their country and building them up to take over one day or mexico. Its sad i really worry about our kids futures and what will happen to them the way our countrys heading. :(:mad:
 
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