The News from ElephantToenails.com

Recently one of our active ETCC members got a lead on a CB 7250 Tortoise Shell handled toenail and did the right thing of running it down. Do you know how rare an authentic 7250 Case Brothers tortoise shell is?

Interestingly, however, it turned out to be the same fake Case Brothers (and same seller, Jay Nelson of Huntington, WV), I purchased a few years ago. The good news is we KNOW about this knife and who has it. The main purpose of this article is to put our other fellow members on notice before Toenail Blindness* clouds someone’s  judgment and it is added to their collection.

Here is it- at first glance it almost looks good but if you look further it is a fake.

I’ll cover what I didn’t like about it, but first take a look at the stamps- Look at how jumbled up the letters are.

Here is the pen blade stamp- check out the remains of the ‘C’ from what I believe to be Camillus. It is right above the C on Case. Also, see how close the letters are- too close among other things.

Now compare the length against authentic Case Brothers. The top one is the ‘51 pattern (4 1/2 inches) and the bottom one is the ‘50 pattern (right at 4 inches) Case Brothers. The fake is in the middle at 4 1/4 inches.

 I”ll post an article illustrating the various Case Brothers stamps (I know of three variations right off) soon.

The knife and backspring are ‘thinner’ than any Case Brothers (or WRC, for that matter), but are an exact match to Camillus in length, width and style. Also this knife lacks the TESTED XX stamp on the rear of the master blade. There were several other issues (real tortoise does not shrink, I am told but celluloid does, etc.), but you get the point. Therefore, I had concluded it is a Camillus frame (the blades were poorly stamped Case Brothers).

Our fellow ETCC member reached his own conclusion on this knife totally independent of me and arrived at the same conclusion- it was a fake and it was really a Camillus.

*Toenail Blindness is an delusionary illness where the collector wants to see a fake knife as the real thing.

ITS BACK>>>>

Back in Nov. this Camillus was on the block, well its back.

My guess is it has been rehandled. Older toenails don’t have super thick stag and this appears to be newer stag.

It is the same seller too.

At the Dalton show I found would have been a first for me but after I scoped it out, determined it was a fake.

It was reported to be called a Case Brothers “swayback” toenail. As I walked up on it, it immediately caught my eye (sorry for the blurry photo…I got this one shot and then my battery died).

It was greenbone Case Brothers that appeared a bit thinner than usual. It was a really cool knife and there for a minute I thought it might be a new toenail “style.” In case you are curious he was asking $2200 for it.

I couldn’t help but get my glass out to look closer and upon a more thorough inspection found the bolster pins had been dug out. No longer where the pins nice and round and there was an unusual “rust” on top of each one- both sides and both ends. Really, that was about all I found that I didn’t like, but put it back fairly quickly after discovering the pin problem and therefore didn’t continue to inspect it. The handles followed the contour of the liners nicely. I did notice there were some “bumps” where the bolsters came to meet the handles in a couple of areas, but probably wouldn’t have been too bothered by that had the pin problems not jumped out at me. The blades and stamping were original…..just don’t know where the counterfeiter came up with the handles and frame.

I walked away from the table disappointed. I thought I had found a real jewel because not all “one of a kind” knives/toenails are fake.

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- (more…)

Reported to be a stag handled Camillus Cutlery Co. New York (both blades stamped).  (more…)