The News from ElephantToenails.com

In case you don’t know we had a major weather day in Alabama yesterday. While some of our area reported damage, our part of the bend fortunately escaped tornadoes and high winds. But as you know part of a tornado event is lightning.

Well I am very sad to report, (more…)

When reading the list of nicknames for the toenail do you every wonder where they came from? Elephant Toenail to me is a match. I can see that nickname, but some of the names are really obscure- like one I was thinking about the other day- The Pumpkinseed.

What the heck is a Pumpkinseed. Yeah, I know what a pumpkin is and I know they have fairly large seed, compared to a strawberry, but I don’t think so. So what say you?

Where did the nickname Pumpkinseed (PumpkinSeed or Pumpkin Seed) come from and how did it become associated with our favorite knife pattern? (more…)

I love being able to get real time feedback from the members here on various topics of interest. While I recognize only a representative segment of our visitors and members take part in our surveys/polls/postings, it does give us a snap shot of feedback at that time. The most Recent Poll asked you to identify your favorite toenail style.

The clear majority of the voters said the Jumbo Swellcenter to be their favorite. Then it was almost a tie between that cute Tear Drop style and what I call the “Standard” style.

The fact that you guys like the Jumbo the best doesn’t surprise me. The Jumbo represents best of all what I think of when I think of a toenail- Massive knife, huge scales (handles) and mother of a master blade. When I think of a toenail the sheer size and weight of the knife instantly comes to mind and the Jumbo is all of that and more!

I will say I was surprised by the level of interest in the Tear Drop style, however, I have always been fond of it. While the standard style, compared to the other two, may strike you as a bit vanilla (plain), we all know it is by far the most common and offers the most variety in the number of different cutlery companies that produced it.

I have a particular fondness for the Jumbo though because it was that knife that jumped out and grabbed me when I, for the first time, flipped the page of Levine’s Guide to Knives and their Values, 4th Edition and saw the various examples of toenails shown on that page.

Did you know there are different variations of the Jumbo? It is true and while they might be considered to only be slight differences, the fact remains there are differences. I have been working on a article on this, but I am not finished, so allow me to illustrate two of the most notable ones below.

While we don’t know this for sure but believe the one shown below is the later model produced by W R Case (after the merger with Platts) and the last model made. Notice the style of the master blade compared to what is called the “Platts Jumbo.” You can see it is a much narrower master blade.

Below is the Platts Jumbo stamped W R Case & Sons, Bradford, PA. This particular knife was either made by Platts on contract for WRC or was made after the firms merged in 1905. Also, you will note the “Platts shield” on these. (I am of the inclination that there is even an earlier version of the “C. Platts” Jumbo and will be sharing that with you in a couple of weeks).

We love the JUMBO!

Over the last 5 years it has been interesting to watch how folks use ET.com. Even though we are just one site among BILLIONS out there in cyberspace, I am glad folks visit and use the information in their pursuit and enjoyment of toenail collecting.

This post probably won’t interest most of you, but to you who have a little nerdiness, a little techieness, I thought I would give you an overview of the visits to the site.

For the month of March 2008-

• The entire site (all of ET.com) had 3594 visits (115 visitors a day), with 1860 unique visitors for the month.
• The average number of page views was 7.24- which is excellent.
• The average time spent on the site was 6.30 minutes
• Folks came to the site: 60% came direct, 26% from search engines and 17% were referred from other websites.

The most popular areas of ET.com were:

1. The News
2. The List
3. Recent Sales

The most popular areas of The News were

1. The News homepage,
2. Vintage Toenail Price Guide,
3. Collector Profiles
4. Toenail Q & A

Visitors to The News (my country tracker for ET.com isn’t working for some reason at this time) came from (and in this order):

1. US
2. UK
3. Canada
4. Poland
5. China
6. France
7. Germany
8. Australia
9. Bulgaria

Drilling the Geo search down deeper for the US: Top 10 States by number of visits to The News were:

1. Alabama- doesn’t count me (from 8 cities)
2. Ohi0 (from 14 cities)
3. Kentucky (from 9 cities)
4. New York (from 15 cities)
5. Maryland (from 6 cities)
6. Virginia (from 13 cities)
7. Penn (from 19 cities)
8. California (from 17 cities)
9. Georgia (from 11 cities)

Interesting tidbit: The folks from Maryland had the highest overall average time on the site with 10:34 minute average each time they visited. 

Now some highly techie stats:

• Of those who came from search engines: 61.5% were from Google, 17.7% from Yahoo, 8.3% from Google Image searches and the balance were MSN, AOL, Dogpile, Netscape and Earthlink, and in that order.
• Browers were: 73.3% used MS Internet Explorer, 14.4% Firefox, 4.6% Safari, followed by Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, K-Meleon, Firebird and Phoenix.
• Operating Systems: 84.1% used Windows, 11.5% Mac, the rest are Linus, FreeBSD, WebTV, Sun Solaris, RISC OS, BeOS.

I will start this article with a confession. I have to tell you I am learning all the time about our wonderful pattern. Originally, when I first put up ET.com under The Knife I have a section of “Firms Who Didn’t Make Toenails” and Miller Brothers was on that list. A few years later, I heard rumor of a metal handled Miller Brothers from Joe Seale, but wasn’t able to run it down. Just a couple of months ago, M. D. Wells mentioned it and told me he knew who owned it. I was beside myself to try to get my hands on it for us here. I have yet to add it to The List, so you are getting to see it first!

In case you aren’t familiar with Miller Brothers, according to Houston Price’s book, Official Price Guide to Collector Knives, 14th Edition, “The firm was founded by brothers who were toolmakers and gunsmith apprentices back in 1863. They purchased the Pratt-Read facilitates in Meriden, CT. The brothers were innovative and their contributions to the knife industry include methods and machinery to stamp knife parts and methods to manufacture bolsters. The firm failed in 1878, but was reorganized under William Rockwell.

In 1917 it sold its cutlery division to Meriden Knife Co. favoring the business of steel pens manufacture. In 1926 it ceased knife manufacturing and went completely into making steel pens (writing pens). Their name was changed at that time to Miller Brothers Pen Co.”

The Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography states that “In 1862, (George) Mr. Miller moved to Meriden, Connecticut, where he entered into the shops of the Parker, Snow & Brooks Company, who engaged in manufacturing Springfield rifles for the US. For some time he worked as a toolmaker, and then took a contract for producing locks for Springfield rifles.

In 1868, in conjunction with his brother, William Miller, he engaged in the manufacture of pocket cutlery, and this led to the formation of Miller Brothers Cutlery Company, still engaged very extensively in the production of various kinds of cutlery, steel pens and other metal products. In 1878, George sold out his interest in the establishment and began the manufacture of pocket knives and novelties, with the factory located at George and Mechanic streets, where he continued until 1899.”I

n a 1906 ad in Connecticut Magazine, Mr. Rockwell is shown as president of the firm. Interestingly, according to ”Men of Mark in Connecticut: Ideals of American Life Told in Biographies, published in 1908, “Mr. Rockwell was a banker. He worked at the bank he ultimately became president of from 1870 til he took office as president in 1902. While he was president of Miller Bros Cutlery Co. he was also on the board of directors at Meriden Cutlery Co.”

Pictured below is a Miller Bros Meriden single blade lockback toenail. Mr. Joe Seale said about this toenail- “It is the rarest of the rare!” Pictured with the knife is an actual Miller Bros. Cutlery Co. billhead from April 30th, 1897. Note: The firm took clam at that time for a patented steel pen called The Acme and other steel pens of every description.

This knife is a single bladed, lock-back metal handled toenail. While I am familiar with at least two other single bladed toenails, one an easy open Union Cutlery Co. that I’ll feature shortly, the other is the easy open C. Platts. While a metal handled toenail may strike you as a first, there is one listed in Parkers Price guide as a M250 metal handled W R Case toenail (I am still trying to track this one down).The handles have their initials on one side and an anchor on the other. Miller Brothers was famous for the metal working and held numerous patents (I’m just starting to think about researching them).

For Immediate Release:

Online knife collectors club announces first-ever meeting on Saturday, July 19th at 11:00 at W R Case Cutlery Co., Bradford, Pa.

The Elephant Toenail Collectors Club (ETCC) officially announced it will hold its first membership meeting around the W R Case Collector Appreciation Day weekend, July 18th & 19th in Bradford, Pa. Knife enthusiasts with an interest in elephant toenails / sunfish knives are invited to attend.

“We are excited about meeting our members for the first time” said organizer Scott King. Case has arranged to allow the club to use their boardroom at the corporate office for this historic meeting. One of the interesting aspects of this meeting is the ETCC is not just another knife club. They were founded in 2003 and have never had a membership meeting. It is an online collectors club for antique toenails. The online club originated with the launching of ElephantToenails.com and has now grown to over 300 members worldwide. Scott began the community to provide a forum for collectors to access information on the popular knife pattern.

“I never dreamed we’d ever actually have an off-line meeting” Scott said. “It was a natural event timing for us to get together while we will be in Bradford for W R Case’s event. Our members are from all over, so I don’t know at this time, how many will attend, but we are excited about meeting. Plus to think we will be calling our first meeting to order in the boardroom of the oldest remaining American cutlery company is just the icing on the cake!“

The ETCC is unique in that it is an online knife collecting community. There are no membership dues, no bylaws and its newsletter, The News, is only available online.

“One of the interesting things about our community here at ET.com is about one third aren’t really toenail collectors, per se. They like knife collecting and the community we have built, another one third are moderately active toenail collectors and the rest being hard-core. We have a good cross section of knife collectors, which is healthy for a community. We really are but a small group of niche collectors of old knives.”

Meeting date and location: Saturday, July 19th at 11:00 in the boardroom at W R Case Cutlery Co.

For additional information contact Scott King at scott@elephanttoenails.com

So far in the poll we have running, the Tear Drop style is out pacing the “standard” style, which I find interesting.

The tear drop style has always intrigued me. So few were produced and to my knowledge, other than a Union Cut. Co our member Barry Stephenson owns (I plan on sharing that one with you soon), Hear Sears is the only firm to have made it (it could be a contract knife for them actually). Obviously, I am only counting old ones.

The tear drop style is actually a sleeveboard style with one end bigger than the other. It is right at 4 inches in length closed. The front bolster is 15/16 inches wide and the rear bolster is 1 1/16 wide.

I could speculate why the tear drop style was produced, but won’t other than to say, I don’t believe form followed any function. Instead, I believe it was made more as a novelty. One day I’ll post on Henry Sears but this post is about the style. I’ll be wrapping up the poll in a few days.

I was doing some research on Napanoch Knife Co. and ran back across this magnificent stag handled tear drop. If you know who owns this knife please let me know. This knife was published in Bruce Voyles’ Book, The IBCA Price Guide to Antique Knives Second Edition published in 1995. He had it at $700 in that edition. The photo above is from his 1st edition. This knife now would be worth probably around $1250 to $1500- my guess anyway. It is the only one I have seen in stag. I do know it was made in pearl, black composition, celluloid and now stag by Henry Sears…some were marked Prussia and then Germany.

Hello everyone, my name is Clay Strong. I live on the southwest coast of Florida along the Caloosahatchee river, not far from the Everglades with its swamps, mosquitoes, and alligators.

I have a small collection of a variety of knives. I haven’t concentrated on a particular category, partly because I like all knives. The investment aspect isn’t as important to me as is the utility and design of a knife to meet a given purpose. The elephant toe-nail was born out of necessity. A tool was needed to perform a particular task in the field and it was not meant to be used for much else. I’m sure that men who carried them learned to do just about everything else that came along though. That’s part of getting to know your knife.

I’m sixty years old. And, since I can’t remember not trying to accumulate one more knife, I guess you could say I’m a lifetime collector. I only have a couple of toenails. They’re beat up and tarnished, but they tell me a story, as do most of my knives. I grew up in the middle of the Texas oil fields. Members of my family and others that I knew worked on oil rigs. My father told me that the big knives carried by his uncles were used a lot to splice steel cable. Rope was never used extensively, except for towing and securing equipment. He mentioned once that my great-aunt’s husband carried a Sunfish all the time. He was the father of the famous golfer Ben Hogan. How’s that for trivia?

My background is a duke’s mixture of experiences. I’ve worked on just about every motorized transportation there is, including airplanes. I was in the Coast Guard and on Navy submarines. I got involved with computers as a result of my military training. Today, I spend most of my time on the web visiting interesting sites such as this one, working on my various websites, writing blogs, and moderating a knife forum. I attend the local shows sponsored by arms and knife collectors. I am amazed at the variety of toenails that are displayed. Each with its story.

Well, that’s my story. I look forward to reading yours, one and all. Give me a shout sometime.Clay Strongeditor@knifelinksunlimited.com

Time to test your ET knowledge. The ET.com staff is always digging for nuggests and had to dig really DEEP to come up with a good one for you here. Are you ready?What is the oldest known published toenail? It could have been in a catalog, advertisement or any other image of a toenail knife? Just so we are clear here- the answer will only deal with any printed reference that includes an actual picture in it….so it could be an advertisement, or cutlery company catalog (or any thing else you know about that actually has a picture of a toenail in it).

1. Was it a in publication, catalog, photograph, billhead, sign or what?
2. What is the date associated with when it was published (must have an actual date or year)
3. What knife company or brand was the toenail?

Put your thinking caps on here. Clue: It isn’t one of the “granddaddies” of cutlery co’s you would normally think of. (more…)

We started the discussion of collectible condition with previous post on “What is the basis of value for an old knife?” While the overall theme was how Brand should have a greater weight than condition when determining the value of an antique knife, we saw one of the byproducts of an overemphasis on condition is knives being “made” to resemble original condition knives.

Today I’d like to discuss what I am going to call “What about knives with the three R’s (Reconditioned, Restored & Reworked) do they qualify as Collectible Condition?”

For us here at ET.com, we have voted on our definition of Collectible Condition and the results may surprise some of you. (more…)