The News from ElephantToenails.com

Knives are as popular as ever. The web has dramatically increased their visibility and availability.

Pocket knives account for the majority of knives owned and used. Within this group, we find hundreds of different patterns. The Elephant Toenail is a pocket knife pattern. There are thousands of toenail enthusiasts who own one or more. Some folks only buy the old ones and others are equally satisfied with the newer ones.

We tend to think of toenail enthusiasts to be a small niche’ group, but it may surprise you to know, the group isn’t as small as we might think. And it is growing….

Tracking Knife Popularity

Trying to track interest in knives isn’t easy. If the knives are new, then we could look at the retail sales numbers. But what about old knives? Well, we could interview dealers, but that would be such a microcosm of info, plus we’d have to conduct the surveys in each region of the country to get its national appeal.

Knife Show traffic? Well, that would provide some info, but not interest in a specific pattern. Price trends would offer some info too, but not necessarily how popular the knives really are, plus popularity doesn’t automatically always translate into higher prices. 

With the advent of the Web, we have an additional resource to gauge their popularity.

2004- 2008 Visitor Trend at ElephantToenails.com 

ET.com Unique Visitors 2004- 2008

Click to enlarge

Go ahead and say it-

“Scott, you can’t take web traffic for one website and correlate it directly to an overall interest in a knife pattern.”

OK, I hear you. But, I do think the increasing number of folks coming to look at these knives is an indication of their interest.

Why else would someone come to a single knife pattern website??  

Sure, some visitors may be looking for a Pachyderm’s foot and not an Elephant Toenail knife.

The Numbers

Then we’d need to look at the number of visitors to visits ratio. 

ET.com Unique Visitors to Visits

The folks who visit come back.

One could say the increase is only a result of collectors just now finding the ET.com site and not a reflection of an increase in the popularity of the knife itself.

If toenails aren’t growing in popularity and there is only a finite number of toenail collectors, then why are the numbers increasing across the board, including the depth of research folks are doing?

Overall Traffic and Pageviews

Pageviews have increased year after year, and for 2008 they increased to 261,000.

So not only are more folks coming. They are coming back. And for 2008, each of the approx. 20,000 visitors viewed on average about 13 pages, and pageviews are the goal for a non-ecommerce site.   

Conclusion

Here’s the deal- I thought you would find these ET.com trends interesting. I know I did. 

To my knowledge, this is the first time there has been a tool of this scope to help track a specific knife pattern’s popularity on a national level (most visitors to ET.com are from the US). 

Is there any earth shattering revelation here for us? Not really, only that folks like Elephant Toenails!

But, I didn’t have to show all of this for us to know that, now did I?

ElephantToenails.com was launched in October 2003. 

Yesterday we celebrated a birthday. It wasn’t mine, or my wife’s, but it was one of my children’s, but not of the flesh and blood variety.

Actually, it was The News’ Birthday! Yes, that’s right. The News at ElephantToenails.com was born on Jan. 1, 2008.

Over the year we added 156 articles within 27 searchable categories and 484 tags for reference.

If you have a moment, take a trip down memory lane, but first let me say that I’m concentrating on being clearer and as succinct now as possible, so please take that into consideration as we step back in time, OK?!

The Elusive Platts Easy-Open Single Blade Jumbo

Another of the last few original toenail makers closes its doors

Gotta Watch Out

Dating the W R Case Jumbo Swellcenter 

Who was the first to make a toenail?

Tidioute: A Town with an edge

Here are links to February’s postings -

Feb 08: Group 1

Feb 08: Group 2

Feb 08: Group 3

It has been a fun year. 

Thanks for all your support!

You guys may be curious as to which are the most popular stories here at The News for the year of 2008.

They are ranked by number of times read (or at least clicked through to) out of the 155 stories published this year.

I’m going to list them in the order of most popular first. Drum roll, please: 

Cutlery News Journal- a new addition to our family

Toenail Trivia- What the heck is a Pumpkin-Seed?

Knife Company History- Lockwood Brothers and one rare bird

W R Case Toenail Reference List: TESTED XX - XX USA Lighting S Era

Featured Toenail- H. Boker & Co.

Rumor Mill- Case discovers a prototype toenail from its earliest days!

Welcome to my World- Early Toenail History

Knife Company History- Cattaraugus Cutlery Co., Little Valley, NY

Knife Company History- Napanoch Knife Company

History of Platts Cutlery Companies

I think the best way to tell you about my last three days is as a photolog, so here goes. The tale begins at Parker’s Knife Show, then a tour through the NKCA Knife Museum and finally, breakfast with some fellow Elephant Toenail Collector Club Members. Then I headed home.

Parker's Show Hall

C Platts Jumbo for sale by Joe Seale

National Knife Collection Museum

Platts History & Jumbo

Case Family Toenail

Case Brothers Toenail

Early Case Toenail

Henry Sears & Son Tear Drop Style

Napanoch Display featuring Toenail

Voyles Knife Auction

Cutlery News Journal has released a new exciting audio series with the key players of the knife industry. Today the first show was made live. It is an exclusive one-on-one candid unscripted interview with Mr. Perry Miller, the President of the National Knife Collectors Association.

Deciding Your Collection’s Direction or Theme

So you have decided you want to purchase a toenail and are trying to decide which one to get. This is a common situation and I am frequently contacted for suggestions. There are several factors you must consider at this point before you jump right in.

Buy the Knives You Like

First, I would encourage you to buy what you like. Do you like new shinny ones or the older varieties that are showing their age? Different strokes for different folks- there is no right or wrong. Again it is what you like. The issue of your likes and do other collectors like your likes only really comes into play when you go to sale the collection. Also, you can take comfort in the fact that the toenail pattern is a popular pattern and unless you only buy JUNK toenails or an entire collection of plastic or celluloid handled toenails, folks will want to buy the knives when you do decide to sale.

See The Possibilities- Go To The List

The first place I would go is The List here at ElephantToenails.com. You will find many different makes and variations, plus there are actually different style toenails too. I don’t want to get too deep into all the specifics at this point and will stay somewhat general to begin with here, but when you go to The List you will see the different drop down menus for most of the different variations manufactured, like maker, style, handle material, color, etc.

Then I recommend you think about this- If you were to want to purchase additional toenails as you go, it is important to consider what I am going to call the direction or theme of your collection. Again keep in mind you are going to be buying what you like, so as you look through The List are there any factors that appeal to you the more. It is OK to begin with to have a hodge-podge of unrelated toenails.

Giving a little thought to the direction of a collection is healthy and will save you headaches and money in the long run.

Your budget is going to come into play immediately, and while it will probably grow as you get into toenails more and begin to appreciate other toenails (either make, handle materials, era, etc).

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I've Got a Beef!

I am angry and I don’t get this angry very often. Without getting into many specifics, allow me to share my observations with you.

Knife collecting will only continue to exist as an industry when folks spending their hard-earned money in good faith believe the knives they buy are authentic. At the point these folks’ confidence in the knife they are buying is shattered then the whole knife collecting hobby/ industry will crash.

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 As I shared with you in my last post- you know the one about the many branches of the tree trunk, my interest in bringing knife news and interesting tidbits to knife collectors has branched out. I have published a new weblog called Cutlery News Journal. 

You guys have supported me greatly here at The News and I appreciate the encouragement expressed to me in this effort. One thing I have learned during that time is while I have a tremendous interest in all things related to elephant toenails, I have experienced a growing interest in knives and cutlery history on a broader scale.

The Cutlery News Journal will provide me an avenue to share with all collectors, of all types of knives, news relating to all of knife collecting. You know I have worked very hard to keep The News as toenail specific as possible. I have intentionally passed up on other topics in an effort to stay true to my original goal here at The News. 

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Do you know what and where The One Hundred Mile Circle is? Well, I am headed there tomorrow and to me it is hog heaven. It is the most historically rich 100 mile patch of territory in the entire United States. I’ve been there only once before 2 years ago, but I felt like I was on holy ground.

If you are a knife collector and into early American cutlery history, and have been in this region, then you know what I am talking about. If you aren’t familiar with this term, it is the 100 mile circle around Little Valley, NY.

According to Giles book, Case, The First 100 Years, there were over 73 different cutlery companies that have at one time been located in this magic circle. I soaked it in when I was there last and hope to do the same this trip.As you probably know, I head out tomorrow on my way into Bradford, Pa for the Case Collectors Appreciation Day. I will be landing in Buffilo and driving down.

Two years ago Case asked me to conduct their auction and they asked me back. On Friday night, we have 10 items that are sure to be treasured among collectors. As you also know we are having our first Elephant Toenail Collector Club meeting at 11:00 Saturday morning in the boardroom of the Case factory. Come be with us.

Last trip in I visited Cattaraugus and Little Valley. I wanted to go over to Eldred, but wasn’t to. I also when on a fun trip with the Case historic tour that takes you up to Little Valley to see the original factor sites and grave sites of the Case brothers and family.I’ll try to post while I am gone but for sure will at least once when I return.

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.