Rare Buffalo Whalers, 61 Deluxe Congress' Serial # Changes
GEC just ran a short run of Smooth (13 Total) and Spiral Cut (9) Buffalo Horn Whalers. NICE!!! The spiral cut is really neat looking on a knife that big.
These are the first of the Deluxe Congress' I've had my hands on. I'm not sure how well I like the over sized bolsters and I'm interested to hear what the rest of you think of this one.
Also worth noting are the COA's and the blades on the the Smooth Yellow Bone are marked 1 of 35. The Snakewood serialized knives come with a COA stating 1 of 35 but no 1 of 35 Blade Etch????? Not sure if this was an oversight or intentional. In addition, they've moved the serial numbers on the Deluxe to the base of the secondary blade.
I knew GEC was going to increase the size of the serialized runs to try and accommodate a few more collectors and these are some of the first I've noticed marked as such. I'm interested to know what you guy's/gals think about the larger serialized runs. When GEC first started out we saw serialized runs that ran over 200 pieces, then they scaled WAY back to 25 serialized. Is the creep back up good, bad or does it matter to anyone?
These are the first of the Deluxe Congress' I've had my hands on. I'm not sure how well I like the over sized bolsters and I'm interested to hear what the rest of you think of this one.
Also worth noting are the COA's and the blades on the the Smooth Yellow Bone are marked 1 of 35. The Snakewood serialized knives come with a COA stating 1 of 35 but no 1 of 35 Blade Etch????? Not sure if this was an oversight or intentional. In addition, they've moved the serial numbers on the Deluxe to the base of the secondary blade.
I knew GEC was going to increase the size of the serialized runs to try and accommodate a few more collectors and these are some of the first I've noticed marked as such. I'm interested to know what you guy's/gals think about the larger serialized runs. When GEC first started out we saw serialized runs that ran over 200 pieces, then they scaled WAY back to 25 serialized. Is the creep back up good, bad or does it matter to anyone?
The first knife that I bought that I consider a "real" knife was a 4 blade Boker with comparable bolsters as this 61, except the Boker bolsters were fancy- what I refer to as stepped down bolsters. This is a very old pattern. The first few times that I carried it, I found out real quick that those points on the edge of the bolsters like to dig into the leg. A whitrock solved that problem-not a good idea on a GEC! I suppose that it's a moot point anyway, since few of Greg's customers buy his knives for the pocket anyway. I like the bolster stamping. Greg knows that I'm not interested in serial numbers over 10. SO numbers up to 35-don't care anyway, but it's still better than what everybody else is doing. Still got that old Boker, plus a few more, just with various scales-still don't carry them, but they're nice to look at. Merry CHRISTmas and a happy new year to ALL !! Charlie
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I'm not sure about the big bolsters,but the stamp looks off to me. It should be centered between the lines. What's there now is less aesthetically pleasing.
As far as the serial numbers are concerned; I don't really care what the specific number of serialized knives is...
...BUT...
...They need to go ahead and make up their minds already and Stick To It!
Now with the placement, I'm not sure whether I like it. I've long wished for a deeper engraving or stamping for the numbers on the bolsters, but as we can already see, the blade-stamped numbers are going to be sctratched and damaged by simply opening and closing the knife.
I like the UN-X-LD blade stamp on the Sunfish, though...
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Greg,
I would love to see the serialized ones stay at 25 but growth says we may need to see that extended. I would not mind serialized as high as 50 but wouldn't want to see them numbered beyond that point. Anything made past 50 would have to be unnumbered in my eyes. If we were looking for 1 of 500 we could find many companies to accommodate that.
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Well, the reason I ask is I question whether there's a trend for collectors to be less concerned about serial numbers than they are in total production numbers. I was just really surprised to see the Ivory without a specific total serialized indicated on the COA. Hope it's not a trend.
When you had the recent SFO run 72's did you have them serialized or was that a factor?
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What surprises me is when there are Genuine Stag knives available in very popular patterns and years that were run in 25 pcs.... to believe that quantities need to be upped is crazy,yes there will be a few patterns or handle material that will be sought after but that's part of the allure and chase...who can get them first...
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What's odd is that going back to 2007 and 2008, there were quite of few of the Gen Stags that came out in fairly high quantities. In 2007 the #73 Nfld total of 56 Red and Black Gen Stag, #23 Red Gen Stag 36. The real heyday for Gen Stag was 2008 with 40 of the 735108's and 52 of the 235108L's in Gen Stag and another 58 of the 538308's all the way up to a whopping 81 of the 542208LPJ's. Granted, there were a lot of models made in much lower quantity but they cranked out the 'keys'.
Then came 2009 and the volume of Gen Stag dropped. In 2010 (with the exception of the 235210EC of which they ran 54 in Gen Stag) we started to see the runs of Genuine Stag start to settle in the <25 range on a regular basis. What really got tough as a distributor was while the number of distributors and collectors increased, the volume of Gen Stag dropped. The days of ordering 8-10 Gen Stags and actually getting them disappeared overnite. That ability to serve the (my) customer(s) has gotten impossible with the exception of a handful of lucky ones (not telling you anything am I!). And that really bothers me.
It's actually kind of interesting to look back at the production totals and watch the patterns that have emerged. Not sure if it's been planned or not, but as they say, out of chaos comes order!!!
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