![]() ![]() The mid 2000’s seemed to find another conscious effort to restore the quality that made the W.R. Backsprings seemed to open up a bit and slab gaps as well as blade play seemed to get much more lax. On the poor little tiny toothpicks, it about eat up the whole blade. Very high cuts and crooked lines on most patterns. But, the blades width got shrunk on many models (congress and gunstock come to mind) and the blade edge grind went for several years looking like it was done with a stone grinder. I don’t know the reason, but may be related to the economy and financial situations. In the early 2000’s we saw a new downturn in Case Cutlery quality. Which means if nobody wants them today, they probably will have little trouble finding them in 10 years. When you see the knives that wholesalers have to put on clearance, it is usually those with some famous person lasered on the blade. I don’t pay much attention to what is etched on the blades, just keep looking for value in the pattern itself. Nonetheless, the Ltd Edition started with a large following, and must still have a lot of fans today or it would have been discontinued. It has always seemed funny to me that the “Limited Edition Series” was one of their highest count productions. This series continues today, but has grown from a per pattern production of (I think) 1000pcs to now 3000pcs. In 1995 Case started the Limited Edition series. Case Cutlery actually produced only a handful of the patterns made in the Case Classics program (seems like the 88 Congress, the 94 Gunboat, and the saddlehorn). Thus, the Case Classics were born and produced in the tens of thousands, most of 1095 and mostly produced by Queen Cutlery via Bluegrass Cutlery contracts. Meanwhile Jim Parker is taking bids on a huge special run of knives he will have made utilizing Case family trademarks he retained after the sale of the company. But, other than a marked increase in quality, they went back to the build that made Case famous. They eliminated the dot dating system (which was re-instated within 3-4 years) and tried a few other changes. The early 1990’s shuffled in a renewed attempt to bring the Case XX brand back to a quality and affordable platform. He went into bankruptcy after owning them a short time. But the new (Parker Cutlery) patterns were only found during the short time Jim owned Case. The goldstone would go on to curl badly on many of the examples. ![]() For the most part these knives were nice and Jim used some tooling (if not externally made altogether) to add some patterns to the catalog. There were also a lot of overruns in most patterns that showed up without the etchings or just outside the set itself. The Case Centennial Set was a 100 knife set in a folder that featured red bone, stag, and goldstone composite. Jim went to work trying to solve the financial problems by flooding the market with variations and collector sets. The late 1980’s brought in the Parker era, wherein Jim Parker leveraged his assets and bought W.R. ![]() For example, this is the point in time that second cut stag was used extensively. Knives from this era are not junk, but you will see looser fitting blades, open backsprings, lower end slabs, etc. With that, we got “new grind” and noticeable decreases in quality. The early 1980’s (circa 1980 – 1987) saw a large push to lower the cost in the production of the Case pocket knives. Case has changed hands several times in the last three decades and has had ups and downs, not only in finances, but in quality. Also, this is my opinion and the facts are from my understanding if someone challenges me I will abandon them completely >Ĭase Cutlery Pocket Knives : The king of the collectiblesĮver since Case Cutlery figured out there was a huge collector market in the 1970’s, they have tuned their brand to not only be a good using knife but THE collectible brand as well. This document will probably be an ongoing work, but will have more detail than what I want to put in the FAQ’s. So, it may be time to have a conversation from a dealer perspective on what generally can / can not be expected from the different brands. Like, “This blade has a little play, is that common”, or “I just snapped a thumbnail, it this bear trap normal”. From time to time a customer will get a knife in the mail and email or call me to ask questions. ![]()
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