Italian stiletto switch blade, differences in the cheap, collectable, and the desirable

[Music] I'm going to talk about the difference between expensive and cheap stilettos these are our examples of 1950s era Italian stilettos that are now highly desired by collectors because of the features that were incorporated back in the 50s when there were for all practical purposes handmade they are just highly desired by collectors and so they've been copied and now there are Chinese copies on the market which are much much much less expensive before example the value of these knives can be enough for five six hundred dollar range whereas the value of the Chinese copies started twenty dollars so that's just an example of the variety there and if you look at these knives and it's crystal clear to you which ones are the expensive ones and which ones are the inexpensive ones then you're you're a relatively experienced person but if you don't know the difference and you can't see the difference be very careful so the for collectors the desirable knives the most in 1950s yeah 1958 is when they passed the Federal switchblade Act in the United States and as a result of that American marketers ride up and as a result of that the italians who are making these knives try to make them less and less it's less expensive in an effort to try and continue to market them but soon they were copied by the chinese and and you end up with a really inexpensive knife oh one more thing the family you'll notice that the bolsters on these are all curved and the bolsters on these three knives are straight in order to close these knives you have to pick a pin you have to pick a pin off the locking tab pick a locking tab off the pin whereas these are bolster release knives you swivel the bolster in order to close the knife and that's another distinction then earlier knives called pick locks highly desirable later knives with what's called the bolster release are much less bizarre what's what's the quality of those Japanese the Chinese knives that a sort of a production knife well they're hot yes there are production knives and now there the quality is very bad very poor fit and finish is no good they're just but fit and finish is no good but they're also very inexpensive so you can get an example that I work for a little while for 20 bucks okay Andy I noticed I think the knives on the right there are made of have handles and horn and these are flex this might be a one handle and as a matter of fact this is actually a brand new or a very modern Italian production knife this is value this name is roughly 20 this very modern Italian production knife all those values maybe 50 or so and once and this is a transitional piece but comparing this knife for example to this knife this is plastic and these are what's called buffalo horn really cowboy those are made in Manzano these are all my honor everything I wrote yeah okay terrific thank you [Music]

Channel: LeRoi Price

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Keywords: brad west, itilian knife, italian switch blade, collecable stiletto, italian stiletto, itatlian stiletto cheap, italian stiletto colectable, italian stiletto desirable, picklock, bolster lock, pick lock

Id: l9kOm-iDlQY

Length: 4min 37sec (277 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 31 2017