Ever wonder why they put that there?
Well wonder no more. I have been researching this topic for hours and days and years and I've followed the rabbit down all the deep dark holes of the internet.
Call it true, call it false. It's just one man's opinion.
Anyway I have seen more than a few Becker's with this mark on it. It turns out that when you do some research: the mark was used wildly over the whole Blackjack line of knives.
These photos only took me about 30 minutes to find. I'm willing to bet I'd find more and more the longer I look.
The photos are all from Worthpoint.
So here is what I believe to be true about this "one of a kind" mark. I think this was Blackjack's way of selling factory seconds. You can do your own research and you will find a lot of mixed-matched opinions. The question is why is there not a unified answer to this mystery mark? Well I hate to say it, but the people who own (or want to sell) these marked blades have everything to gain by hyping them up to be something they simply aren't. Also, the guys who ran Blackjack certainly are not going to come forward and say they didn't meet the QC standards. Blackjack wanted a way to sell factory seconds at the regular price so they made it happen.
The proof is in the pudding, so where's the pudding? What leads me to say this? I'm not going to lie: some of it is speculation from people I trust. People who worked with Blackjack during that time (and since this blog is 99% about Becker knives, I'm sure you can guess who one of them is). Blackjack was known for some shady business back then and if you don't believe that, hit up Google. Surely at this time some random reader is now super pissed at me for implying his Blackjack safe-queen is a second and worth less. Well yes and no. Yes I think they are worth less. People who try to sell these market them as "super ultra rare," "first production," or my favorite: "prototype." I'm not saying you don't have a truly one of a kind blade, every factory second is probably unique in their own small way. However, it still needs to be labeled as what it truly is, because I'm sure whatever uniqueness your "one of a kind" has: it's still a flaw.
So I do have one last piece of evidence to support my case. I own the "one of a kind" Magnum Camp in the very first photo at the top of this post. Let me tell you, it's a factory second. The grind is slightly thicker: which adds some more weight. However, the big "give away" is the fact that it's bent to the left...
Another problem is that the choil cut-out is literally at an angle and not flat, like it should be.
The angled choil is easy to feel, but hard to capture in photos... I tried.
You can see that this side is angled in the photo below.
I've owned four or five regular Magnum Camp knives and not one had any of the defects of the marked one. So keep in mind that I have nothing to gain by calling them seconds, by doing so I'm literately de-valuing one of my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment