Sometimes we just have to laugh
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
It happened to me a few weeks ago as I was continuing my research and tidbit gathering on Miller Brothers Cutlery Co. While I confess not to be the most qualified researcher out there, I have been able to locate some fairly good bits and pieces on Cutlery Companies including old knife boxes, postcards, letters, canceled checks, photos, etc. These items give us a very brief glimpse of a particular instant in time- Freezing time for us to see it as it was back then.
As you probably know, one of the most interesting aspects of collecting vintage toenails is being able to look through the window provided by such memorabilia to see what it was like then. I call it the “Life and Times” of the Golden Era of American Cutlery history (the late 1800’s to early 1900’s).
Well, the other day, I was doing my research on Miller Brothers. If you read the the Miller Brothers article here in The News you know this is a very interesting firm with a fair amount of info available for us. I have been working on accumulating anything Miller Brothers (except non-toenail knives) and even have an ad running in Knife World looking for MB stuff.
Well, on this day I was searching deep into the bowels of my hard drive when I ran across an eBay sale from Nov. 2004 of a Miller Bros. billhead (letterhead/invoice). The billhead was dated April 30th, 1897. 
Here is the actual photo the seller used for the auction.
I actually had saved this auction’s page on my computer at the time the auction ended. As I was preparing to open the HTML file I thought to myself- “gosh, I wish I had this billhead. I need to contact the guy who bought it and see if he would be willing to sell it to me, even if I had to offer his a handsome profit to get my grubby lit’le hands on it.”
I scanned down the eBay page to find the buyer’s name and much to my surprise….. it was me. 
Sometimes we just have to laugh at ourselves, don’t we?
I happened to be in the middle of an email conversation (that lasted several days) with our honorary member, Mr. Mark Zalesky (editor of Knife World) so I mentioned this funny story to him. Evidently he thought it was funny too. I understand he used it in his editorial for this next edition. (He said the names were changed to protect the innocent, we’ll see.)
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