The Standard Knife Collector’s Guide (sixth edition)

Description

The Standard Knife Collectors Guide, 6th Edition
by Ron Stewart
Softcover, 784 pp.

This extensive price guide focuses primarily on pocketknives, and includes almost 2400 illustrations – many in an expanded color section.
Throughly Updated
Expanded RBR Evaluation Scales
2379 Illustrations
Extensive Color Section
784 Pages

BOOK REVIEW
reviewed by Knife World Staff

A new edition of an old favorite has just arrived: The Standard Knife Collector’s Guide.

The first thing one may notice about this edition is that it is no longer the “Ritchie & Stewart” book. Roy Ritchie, who originated this series in the 1960s as The Kentucky Knife Traders Manual, died last year after a long and productive life and is memorialized here in a touching tribute by his longtime collaborator Ron Stewart, who carries on the series.

The new Standard Guide has grown by another 32 pages, with an expansion of the book’s famous RBR appraisal system and the usual updating of values. The RBR system is designed to allow users to estimate value for a wide range of folding knives by combining the primary features of a given knife – manufacturer, pattern, handle material, and condition – together with numerical values and percentages provided by the system’s tables. Armed with a calculator (or a mind that’s good with numbers), one can appraise almost any kind of folding knife in a minute or two.

A major portion of the book is devoted to short, illustrated profiles of major knife companies from Aerial Cutlery to George Wostenholm, including those such as Belknap Hardware, Camillus, Holley, L.F.& C., Maher & Grosh, Queen, Remington, Schrade, Western, and Winchester, as well as many others. These are followed by brief sections on Custom-Made Knives, Sheath and Hunting Knives, Carving and Kitchen Cutlery, Straight Razors, and Commemoratives, Reproductions, and Limited Edition Knives.

One of the most useful parts of the entire book, particularly for the beginning collector, is the 63-page section on handle materials, which displays a wide range of materials entirely in color. Other sections include Care and Management of a Knife Collection, Knife Sharpening, Cutlery Stores and Dealers, Knife Books and Periodicals, and Knife Clubs.

Before wrapping up with a Glossary, there are detailed listings, by pattern number, for seven different knife brands: Buck Creek, Case, Cattaraugus, Remington, Robeson, Taylor, and Winchester (I believe that the listings for Taylor and Buck Creek, a Taylor brand, are the only ones that have been published.) Fast and easy to use; the combination of these listings with the RBR scales increases the usefulness of this book.

The Standard Knife Collector’s Guide, Sixth Edition continues to be a very useful reference for pocket knife collectors – and at just $16.95, it’s a great value.

keywords: pocket, commemorative, repro, limited edition, reproduction, Buck Creek, Case, Cattaraugus, Remington, Robeson, Taylor, Winchester