The News from ElephantToenails.com

David and I have corresponded over the last few years primarily pertaining to his articles in Knife World.  In the Jan. 2006 edition, he wrote “Little Town with a Big History.”

Now David has joined us here at ET.com.    

David L. Anthony of North West Pennsylvania , near lake Erie

I learned of toenails years ago due to my love cutlery from the

state of Pennsylvania. Of course the knives from Eldred, PA 

Platts relations and the popular toenail. I hope to someday own

one of those giant Platts knives.

I have been into all Pennsylvania knives for more than 35 years,

but toenails have been a passion for at least 20 of them.

I don’t focus on patterns as much as I do Penn related tang stamps.

All of my knives tend to be vintage, older than 1970, mostly

older than 1940.

I am a municipal manager and oversee a large Township on Erie

county Pa.

I love knife shows, but only get to a couple a year due to their

location.

My dream knife is a Union Razor Tidioute Toenail. I hope to get

one someday. Of course I would love a Platts as well.

Please take a look at my Book “Tidioute: A Town With an Edge”

Scott has been kind enough to mention it here on this site. It

has photos of Toenails sent to me by Scott and also some history

on them from Tidioute as well.

my e-mail is dragon@velocity.net  feel free to contact me with

comments or questions

Thanks David for stepping up and sending in your profile. I did a review of his book and it is “filed” under the Book Reviews category here in The News.

 Stayed tuned for the next ET Member Profile.  Go ahead and send yours in so we can meet you too.

Many of you who have been around since I started ET.com back in 2003 know me pretty well, but what can I say- I’m nuts about old toenails.

I like the historic aspect of old cutlery firms, the Who/What/When and Why to them and their knives.

If you have visited the About Me link in ET.com you know how I got started back collecting knives and how I first got introduced to toenails.

I am a father of four wonderful kids, ages 12, 14, 16 and 18. My wife of 22 years thinks I am nuts, but is glad I have something relatively constructive to invest my time (but no money) in. We live in NE Alabama.

I am a principal in a national real estate auction firm and travel all over meeting with folks with real estate holdings.

I have limited my focus to only toenails and really only old ones. The older the better. I have been tempted by custom toenails and even once or twice by Classics.

What am I looking to purchase? Well, would love to find a pearl and stag MSA, a Case M250 (metal toenail), a stag Case Brothers 5251- to name a few.My favorite toenail? Well, honestly, I like most all of them. I like Jumbo swellcenters probably the best and winterbottom and Rogers bone (stag and pearl too!) handles on any brand. I would say celluloid toenails are my least favorite.

I do have outside interest and one of my most fun is driving top down in my Shelby

….see that wasn’t so bad, now its your turn.

We are up and running with The News in our new blog format here at ET.com. You now can scope out what you are interested in a matter of seconds. I can update it in real time on any topic related to knives, collecting, toenails and more! Wordpress is a blogging program and it has tremendous expansion capabilities for you & me.

• It allows permanent pages on different subjects (see Pages) and to organize my blogpost topics by subject (see Categories), plus tags (odd looking key words). You simply click to see all post with that key word in it. And on top of all that is a search function for the entire News of ET.com.  
• Now important topics can be added without building a new “webpage” in the main area of ET.com.  For example, I have already started an area on Counterfeits here in the News. I have wanted to add them to ET.com (I have been saving them for a couple of years now and have quite a few to add), but it was going to be a major to do in the main area, much like The List and Recent Sales were…big deals, code/database set up, time and $$. 
  
• Now I can quickly post on a counterfeit toenail I run across. Classify it as such in the Counterfeits category.  Then when you click the Counterfeit category, you instantly see all post on the counterfeits are organized there for you in one area. And over time that area will grow extensively for us to learn to identify all the tricks used to try to fool us into buying fakes. 
• It is very easy for you and on me too!  
• Subscribe to the RSS feed to this area to be notified when I add News.  
• You can post comments to my topics.
• I can easily show pics, audio and video. 
• We are going to have some fun here. It will be the most dynamic & useful area of ET.com! (more…)

I heard through the Rumor Mill there may be a Jumbo Swellcenter in production. This could be a hot number among collectors if done right (like stag handles). I know there has been encouragement for the holder of the Platts trademark to produce one, with no luck yet. I’ll keep my ear to the ground to see what I can learn. All I can say at this point is I hope it isn’t going to be a Rough Rider brand.

One of the aspects I thoroughly enjoy about hosting ET.com is the pleasure to meet collectors, new and old, from all over the world. Last week, I had the opportunity to meet Dario. He immediately got on my good side with this message:  (more…)

I can’t believe it. I flipped through the hardcopy catalog I received today and just shook my head, for two reasons: One- because we as toenail collectors think toenails are getting expensive and because I am very impressed with the collection Mr. Littman amassed. There are 143 pages of knives (no toenails I already looked). Hundreds of knives, and some really expensive ($100,000- $150,000) individual knives. Can’t wait to see how many millions this sale brings in (plus I am an auctioneer and think how much fun it would be to do a knife auction).

Here is a doozie..Reported to be a Case Bros imitation tortoise shell. Here’s the seller’s description: (more…)

Many of us use eBay as one of our sources for old toenails. Overall, it is a good source, however, from my experience there are two types of sellers.  (more…)

Did you notice the eBay auction about a week ago that was a 10 dot Case XX USA? The seller reported it to have red bone handles. I questioned it immediately.  (more…)

How about that article by Gary Moore in the the July 07  editon of Knife World? 

(more…)