How many of You are collecting exclusively (or nearly) Spyderco knives?

[bdblue]

I owned user folding knives from a number of brands. Then I started buying Spyderco and they have pushed almost all of the other knives out of my group of user knives.

[toml4185]

Most of mine are Spyderco and they work very well for me. I have a decent collection of Case traditional knives as well.

On my wanted list outside of Spyderco is (just for something completely different):
- Zero Tolerance 562cf
- UTX-70

[olditguy]

Historically 44%, last 5 years 99%. I've found my type.

[jwbnyc]

I accumulate all kinds of knives. I collect Police Models, Mule Teams and Militaries, but I also collect Queen knives.

What the heck is this guy in the middle there?

Not sure what to call it. Easy out melon tester, elephant castrater, or ? Someone called it the best folding skinner ever made.

Edit to add: got home and dug it out, pattern number is 62. Queen called it a citrus/melon knife.

Thanks. It’s a tad unusual.

Mad Mac, now that you mention it, it’s recognizable as a Spey blade, just a really long one. Thanks.

[wrdwrght]

Only Spydies for me, now probably as much for the phenomenon of Spyderco as for the Spydies.

[Paul Ardbeg]

About 40% of my knives are Spyderco's and the only brand i'm actively collecting.

[aicolainen]

I'll probably never outright admit to being a collector, but it could be hard to defend that position if I were to explain my (user) knife situation to a non knife person. Oh well...

In the first couple of years after I got interested in folding knives I was still learning and developing my preferences, so acquisitions around this time were much more influenced by reviewers and forum opinions. While Spyderco was obviously still well represented, even back then - the ratio has turned overwhelmingly in favour of Spyderco as I realised what features, qualities and design aspects matters the most to me.

I wouldn't say I'm brand loyal, I want the best tool I can get independent of brand, but there is no denying that I've developed a kind of selection bias. Not necessarily because Spyderco is the best choice every time, but because it's a safe choice. With other brands there has been more of a hit and miss experience, so even if I see potential in a knife from another brand, I would be more hesitant than if it were a Spyderco.

So what's the number situation? I don't know the exactly, but for all knives in total I'd guess there's slightly more than 50% Spyderco. New folding knife acquisitions the last 4-5 years are probably 85+% Spyderco. For fixed blades it's much, much less, and if even possible I'd say it's probably still on a downward trend.

[zuludelta]

If we're talking strictly folders, I think Spyderco comprises at least 70% of my knife collection. If we're including fixed blades in the data set, I think the number is closer to 50% (or maybe less).

I use my folders primarily for work, and for my money, Spyderco's flagship & evergreen models consistently deliver the best combination of ergonomics/usability, quality control, robustness, blade geometry, and materials that I look for in a work folder.

[horzuff]

I’m having a little trouble figuring out which category to pick in this poll. I collect Spyderco almost exclusively in modern folding knives, having maybe Three Benchmade, otherwise, all the same model, which are older work knives. OTOH, I have somewhere close to the same number of SAKs that I have Spydercos, so I’m leaning towards 50/50 (...)

I would exclude all SAKs and multitools as they are not *just* knives.

I checked Spyderco 100%, actually the only other knife I own is a ZT 0562. (...)

I think that's completely fair :). The ZT is quite a departure from usual Spydercos, what sets it apart from all other non-Spydies for You?

I don't have many knives period, so I am probably not the kind of person this question best applies to, but... Despite how much I love Spyderco folders, my favorite knives will always be of the fixed blade breed. Spyderco seems to lack fixed blades in current production that really appeal to me from all angles, so in the realm that I am most likely to expand my collection, Spyderco is not likely to make up the majority.

I'm curious about all types of knife users :).

As for fixed blades - I miss the Phil Wilson designs especially, though luckily I'm more of a folder guy in general. What models do You miss?

All brands. Spyderco, Leatherman, Cold Steel, Victorinox, various japanese kitchen knife makers, fiskars, queen, scrap yard, kiwi, etc.

spyderco has too many gaps in their line-up for me to go all in. $25 or less beater machete, 5"+ folders, different kitchen knife patterns (don't think they currently sell a boning knife for example), axes and hatchets, folding saws, don't think they sell anything with a scandi grind for wood working these days, nothing like my scrapyard dogfather (9" s7 chopper), etc.

That is true indeed. But how would it look if You considered only those areas that Spyderco does cover? Just curious.

I have collected different brands over the years but over 90% are presently Spyderco . MG2

What others were those? What caused the drift?

About half of my collection is Spyderco. I also enjoy a few others

Really nice "others" quite a chasm between these and typical Spydies :D. Do You consider those safe queens/collection jewels and Spydercos as working tools or do You use them equally?

I bought many different knives from 1 inch to 24 inch blades, because Spyderco can't make them all.

I'm cutting way back selling another $10k in (fixed and folding) knives again and will have almost nothing but Spyderco Native Chief folders.

My fixed blade collection is a lil trickier, and I'll have a few Spydercos and a few other brands.

What made You settle on the Native Chief exactly? A great design for sure, I love my CF+S90V for sure :)

I spent most of 2023 with a Microtech in my pocket

But the vast majority are Spydercos. Probably more like 90%.

What Microtech model was it?

The poll needs another option. It's less than 50% but not an even spread. If we are going by percentage of $ invested, then it's more than half.

Yeah, thought of plenty other options but I think that would make it less legible in the end. That's what the "more or less" part is for :D loophole to make it more broadly applicable. In Your case I would pick the even spread :)

About 90% of knives I buy for work and home are now Spyderco. I don’t collect knives per se, I just have a lot of users. Out of a current 50+ knives 4 are PW Customs fixed blades, 1 is a Hogue and 1 is an engraved Opinel which I received as a gift from a conference I spoke at. The rest are all Spyderco.

The collection part was just a word I settled on :). What Houge managed to win Your bucks?

Historically 44%, last 5 years 99%. I've found my type.

Don't leave us guessing, what is it? :D

Only Spydies for me, now probably as much for the phenomenon of Spyderco as for the Spydies.

Do You mean the community and company values?

I'll probably never outright admit to being a collector, but it could be hard to defend that position if I were to explain my (user) knife situation to a non knife person. Oh well...

In the first couple of years after I got interested in folding knives I was still learning and developing my preferences, so acquisitions around this time were much more influenced by reviewers and forum opinions. While Spyderco was obviously still well represented, even back then - the ratio has turned overwhelmingly in favour of Spyderco as I realised what features, qualities and design aspects matters the most to me.

I wouldn't say I'm brand loyal, I want the best tool I can get independent of brand, but there is no denying that I've developed a kind of selection bias. Not necessarily because Spyderco is the best choice every time, but because it's a safe choice. With other brands there has been more of a hit and miss experience, so even if I see potential in a knife from another brand, I would be more hesitant than if it were a Spyderco.

So what's the number situation? I don't know the exactly, but for all knives in total I'd guess there's slightly more than 50% Spyderco. New folding knife acquisitions the last 4-5 years are probably 85+% Spyderco. For fixed blades it's much, much less, and if even possible I'd say it's probably still on a downward trend.

I also insist I use all my knives but no knife-sane person would understand having so many :D.

As for the trend, I think we have similar views on Spydies - they rarely have any gotchas and are mostly really functional!

[Evil D]

@horzuff

I have a MagnaCut/Ultem Ultratech and a proof run Scarab 2 Gen 3. Also a couple Livewires in that timeframe too. Kinda fell down the OTF rabbit hole pretty hard while waiting for the Spydercos I wanted to release.

[vivi]

You asked, how would my collection look if we excluded categories Spyderco does not cover?

About 50/50.

Sometimes it's a matter of preference, sometimes a matter of price. Sometimes a little of both.

Some examples:

- zcuts are one of spydercos best value knives. I could have easily spent $100 on a set of five for steak knives. Instead I got 12 Kiwi 511's for $20 shipped. Admittedly they don't hold an edge as long as a zcut in bd1n, but edge holding doesn't need to be high for cutting a few filets and NY strips per year.

- Spyderco makes the Respect, which I could use for clearing trails. Instead I opt for a Scrapyard Dogfather. The S7 steel is waaaaaaaaay tougher than the 154CM, and the handle works better for chopping through subtropical foliage for hours at a time. It was also under half the price of what Respects sell for, though with inflation they'd probably sell closer to $300 than $200 these days.

- I keep a Kiwi 172 on my cutting board at home and use the larger Kiwi 22 as a work beater. The 172 and 171 get used for making my kids lunch. Slicing fresh fruit each morning, halving sanwiches, basic stuff like that. I can get 15-20 of them for the price of a k08 spyderco santoku. For a true beater than lives in a commercial kitchen, gets banged around etc., the 22 is hard to beat.

- Spyderco made the Tatanka, which I considered. But at the time I wasn't sure I'd actually EDC a folder that big and heavy. I went with a Voyager XL instead, which was lighter, has better slicing geometry, and was close to $200 cheaper. While today I kick myself for never ordering a Tatanka to try EDCing, the Voyager fills this role very well.

- I'm a chef by trade. Spyderco has the Murray Carter collection that they started offering around the same time I decided to upgrade from budget western knives like Victorinox to superblue, white #1, damascus etc. japanese cutlery. I'm sure the Spydercos perform, and having handled them I know they have good balance etc., but price wise they were not competitive. The plastic handled bd1n gyuto costs more than my aogami super kurouchi finish gyuto by Tsunehisa as one example. Same story with my petty collection - I have a nice VG10 damascus petty @ 5.5", and a 6" white #1 petty with a gorgeous burnt oak handle. $65 & $70 respectively. The plastic handled Spyderco petty by itself is more than these two + felt lined blade covers. Don't even get me started on the budget knives I'm willing to loan my line cooks that don't have their own knives. I can get a CS Commercial Series 10" chefs knife for $21, slap a thinner edge on it and cut circles around any 10" chef knife knife under $100.....but I guess it can be argued Spyderco isn't competing with budget chef knives currently. Looking at the mid range, I visited Serenity Knives in Houston, TX to buy myself a new chefs knife when I took a new position a few years back. I opted for a Tojiro Oboro VG10 & micarta 8" gyuto for a little over $100. Spyderco doesn't offer anything similar for a competitive price. Paring knives? Spydercos cheapest is $36 at knife works. I get Victorinox ones for $5-8. etc.

This is excluding stuff I use very often, like my trail clearing machetes, my fire wood processing axes, camping hatchets, scandi bush crafters, dough cutter, multitools etc.

So even ignoring that they only offer about 50% of the categories of cutting tools I use, to be perfectly honest they are not price competitive enough in a lot of the areas they do cover for me to go all in on the brand.

[JoviAl]

The collection part was just a word I settled on :). What Houge managed to win Your bucks?

A good question - I had to google it as it gets so little pocket time! Turns out it’s a (and I believe this to be verbatim so maybe take a deep breath before starting) HOGUE KNIVES COLLECTORS SERIES SIG SAUER CARBON FIBER K320 ABLE LOCK MANUAL FOLDER 3.5" 20CV TANTO POINT, which is a bit of a mouthful. Fantastic build quality, lovely execution, but a total impulse purchase on my part as every time I pick it up to pocket it, I hear that scene from the car in Snatch play out… “Wipe the butter off that and put it away. There’s a real blade back there” then I rummage some more and get my M2XL Cruwear out and get on with the job.

[mikey177]

About 50% of my knives are from Spyderco. The remainder are mostly ZT, Benchmade, Kershaw, and Hogue for folders. For EDC size fixies, I have Bark River, Bradford Knives, White River, and Esee. For choppers, I use Esee, Ka-Bar, OKC, Condor, and a bunch of locally forged blades. This is the result of 10+ years of collecting.

I've slowed down considrably on buying new knives, and with Spyderco prices approaching Benchmade and ZT levels for some models, it makes it easier to forego acquiring more Spydies.

[Manixguy@1994]

Most other brands are keepsakes and a few custom fixed blades . Last other I bought was a Microtech MSI , like it but not as much as larger Spyderco knives . Over the years the hole in blade and large variety of models and steel moved me to mostly collect Spydies . MG2

[derp]

90%+ Spyderco. There are a few other brands/designs I'd like to try. Every time I'm thinking about buying a microtech, for example, I end up buying 2 Spyderco's instead lol

[sn0wman72]

About 60% of the knives I have are Spyderco's, the remainder are predominately Chris Reeve Knives, with various other manufactures filling out the rest of the "collection" The other manufacturers show up as they just do some things that Spyderco does not/ or at least not to the extent (automatic knifes, Frame locks in Ti, etc)

[horzuff]

@horzuff

I have a MagnaCut/Ultem Ultratech and a proof run Scarab 2 Gen 3. Also a couple Livewires in that timeframe too. Kinda fell down the OTF rabbit hole pretty hard while waiting for the Spydercos I wanted to release.

Didn't expect that :D, thought it would be some of the manual offerings, but makes more sense, no similar offerings from Spyderco. On the topic of OTFs did You check out the BM ShootOut? Great EDC OTF, lighweight, great geometry, light action and, with the drop point version now out, even more functional. Though it is quite rattly, on par with a more-rattly example of an ultratech (not the newest version) but in plastic so a bit louder maybe.

You asked, how would my collection look if we excluded categories Spyderco does not cover?

About 50/50.

Sometimes it's a matter of preference, sometimes a matter of price. Sometimes a little of both.

Some examples:

- zcuts are one of spydercos best value knives. I could have easily spent $100 on a set of five for steak knives. Instead I got 12 Kiwi 511's for $20 shipped. Admittedly they don't hold an edge as long as a zcut in bd1n, but edge holding doesn't need to be high for cutting a few filets and NY strips per year.

- Spyderco makes the Respect, which I could use for clearing trails. Instead I opt for a Scrapyard Dogfather. The S7 steel is waaaaaaaaay tougher than the 154CM, and the handle works better for chopping through subtropical foliage for hours at a time. It was also under half the price of what Respects sell for, though with inflation they'd probably sell closer to $300 than $200 these days.

- I keep a Kiwi 172 on my cutting board at home and use the larger Kiwi 22 as a work beater. The 172 and 171 get used for making my kids lunch. Slicing fresh fruit each morning, halving sanwiches, basic stuff like that. I can get 15-20 of them for the price of a k08 spyderco santoku. For a true beater than lives in a commercial kitchen, gets banged around etc., the 22 is hard to beat.

- Spyderco made the Tatanka, which I considered. But at the time I wasn't sure I'd actually EDC a folder that big and heavy. I went with a Voyager XL instead, which was lighter, has better slicing geometry, and was close to $200 cheaper. While today I kick myself for never ordering a Tatanka to try EDCing, the Voyager fills this role very well.

- I'm a chef by trade. Spyderco has the Murray Carter collection that they started offering around the same time I decided to upgrade from budget western knives like Victorinox to superblue, white #1, damascus etc. japanese cutlery. I'm sure the Spydercos perform, and having handled them I know they have good balance etc., but price wise they were not competitive. The plastic handled bd1n gyuto costs more than my aogami super kurouchi finish gyuto by Tsunehisa as one example. Same story with my petty collection - I have a nice VG10 damascus petty @ 5.5", and a 6" white #1 petty with a gorgeous burnt oak handle. $65 & $70 respectively. The plastic handled Spyderco petty by itself is more than these two + felt lined blade covers. Don't even get me started on the budget knives I'm willing to loan my line cooks that don't have their own knives. I can get a CS Commercial Series 10" chefs knife for $21, slap a thinner edge on it and cut circles around any 10" chef knife knife under $100.....but I guess it can be argued Spyderco isn't competing with budget chef knives currently. Looking at the mid range, I visited Serenity Knives in Houston, TX to buy myself a new chefs knife when I took a new position a few years back. I opted for a Tojiro Oboro VG10 & micarta 8" gyuto for a little over $100. Spyderco doesn't offer anything similar for a competitive price. Paring knives? Spydercos cheapest is $36 at knife works. I get Victorinox ones for $5-8. etc.

This is excluding stuff I use very often, like my trail clearing machetes, my fire wood processing axes, camping hatchets, scandi bush crafters, dough cutter, multitools etc.

So even ignoring that they only offer about 50% of the categories of cutting tools I use, to be perfectly honest they are not price competitive enough in a lot of the areas they do cover for me to go all in on the brand.

Understood completely. Also You have a pretty unique (or at least very different from mine) viewpoint being a proffessional chef. And with cost/value being so high in Your values it's still pretty impressive that You have so many Spydies, never felt this was ever an area where the company shines or even tries to compete.

The collection part was just a word I settled on :). What Houge managed to win Your bucks?

A good question - I had to google it as it gets so little pocket time! Turns out it’s a (and I believe this to be verbatim so maybe take a deep breath before starting) HOGUE KNIVES COLLECTORS SERIES SIG SAUER CARBON FIBER K320 ABLE LOCK MANUAL FOLDER 3.5" 20CV TANTO POINT, which is a bit of a mouthful. Fantastic build quality, lovely execution, but a total impulse purchase on my part as every time I pick it up to pocket it, I hear that scene from the car in Snatch play out… “Wipe the butter off that and put it away. There’s a real blade back there” then I rummage some more and get my M2XL Cruwear out and get on with the job.

Just rolls off the tongue xD. Cool version of an interesting knife, I like Hogue's crossbar lock knives, wish to get a large Ritter sometime, but they are slightly hard to get - only distributed by knifeworks so no EU availability

[Synov]

Really nice "others" quite a chasm between these and typical Spydies :D. Do You consider those safe queens/collection jewels and Spydercos as working tools or do You use them equally?

The ones I posted pictures of are definitely safe queens. I have paired down my collection quite a bit and don't use the Spydies that are left much. I prefer to use knives I care less about.

[wrdwrght]

Only Spydies for me, now probably as much for the phenomenon of Spyderco as for the Spydies.

Do You mean the community and company values?

While “community and company values” are certainly attractions to me, the former is the result of—and the latter is a requirement for—something else.

That “something else” has to do with how Sal and Gail grew their company. I like to imagine the decisions they made to keep it ceaselessly innovative and make it an industry beacon.

It’s no mistake that Spyderco has been generous to other designers, hungry for customer opinion, clever in its distribution network, and global in the reach of its tiny headcount. Consider its collaboration program, this forum, its loyal online sellers, and the small and large factories in Asia and Europe to which it’s been loyal, some over generations.

And it should come as no surprise that the company’s new(ish) leader has a recognizable enthusiasm, set of talents, and sense of mischief.

All of this makes Spyderco phenomenal in my mind, quite apart from the Spydies in my pocket.

[Naperville]

I bought many different knives from 1 inch to 24 inch blades, because Spyderco can't make them all.

I'm cutting way back selling another $10k in (fixed and folding) knives again and will have almost nothing but Spyderco Native Chief folders.

My fixed blade collection is a lil trickier, and I'll have a few Spydercos and a few other brands.

What made You settle on the Native Chief exactly? A great design for sure, I love my CF+S90V for sure :)

One gentle sweep, curve, arc from front to back of the knife. Good length for a folder. Awesome steels.

I don't have all of the Native Chiefs yet but a few models I have as many as 3 to 4 copies(M390, M390 Blk, S90V). Not sure how many I have, maybe 12 to 15 ? I'll probably buy a few more of my favorites. I'd like to have duplicates of all of them then I could use all of them and have an untouched copy remaining.

Spyderco is a design company and a knife manufacturer of knives with high end steels. The Spyderco Native Chief is a cutting edge design and it is almost perfect to me. We need a flipper version. We need a 5 inch blade version. We need a slight hilt, maybe part of the hilt and part of the scale could come down just slightly to prevent the hand from moving forward down onto the blade, in case you hit something solid on a thrust. It's thin, it slices. The attributes of good piercing performance and slicing performance, in steels that have high cutting potential....what is not to love.

It's a great folder! Highly recommended.