The News from ElephantToenails.com

Have you seen the “rare” Case XX USA 6250 Pearl going off on eBay?

Let’s chat here about this….first off from a collector’s perspective can a “rehandled knife” still be NM? I plan on posting about reworked and repaired knives very soon here in The News, but for now, let’s set that aside…..

If you are new to toenails or Case dotted series toenails, I need to point a few things out-

• First, I spoke with Case and they only produced the dotted series (throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s) in wood handles, not pearl and not redbone.
• Also, the pattern number for pearl handled toenail made by Case is 8250, not 6250. The 6250 pattern number is for their wood handles. But the other fact is because this is “imitation” pearl, heaven only knows what pattern number would have been.

Here’s the seller’s description on the eBay sale: “For sale is a “RARE” Case XX USA 6250 - 6 Dot Toe Nail knife. This knife has never been used or sharpened. The blades are bright & shiny and without spots. The imitation White Pearl handles are GORGEOUS, looks like the real deal. They have no shrinkage what so ever, tight against the bolster. The handles are in perfect condition. I was told that this knife was sent back to Case and they rehandled it. It is probably a 1 of 1. I have never seen one before (duh…sk). Except for a few scratches on the bolsters, I would consider this knife to be in mint condition. So I will call it near mint.”

Let me ask, from our perspective, does the fact that the seller discloses to us that the knife was sent back to Case for rehandling change anything here? From an eBay point of view, disclosure is good. From a toenail collectors perspective, no it doesn’t. Even if you personally accept the fact that a rehandled knife is OK (not a fake, that is), then the fact remains that this knife was rehandled with a handle that was not original to the knife for that era/time. Case didn’t make a pearl or im. pearl dotted series. Additionally, had the seller just put it up and sold it for what is appears to be, a pearl dotted series toenail, we would have for sure classified it as a fake…so the seller did good by not trying to defraud the bidders, but he/she really didn’t call a spade a spade.

So before we get all warm and fuzzy about that seller “doing the right thing” let’s think about it a little more. Why didn’t the seller own up to that fact that the knife had been rehandled? Just a little due diligence would have been in line.

So, really the seller didn’t take the high road on this one. To me this is evident by the seller not doing a little checking out on what he/she was really selling, plus the fact that the seller actually called this a “RARE” Case XX USA 6 dot. Well from the broadest possible perspective, yeah it is rare, just as if I put jade handles on a jumbo, but in the end, it is only rare because they didn’t make them like that originally.

We have many new toenail collectors in our membership here, otherwise, I would have let this knife go and not mentioned it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Counterfeits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.