If you’ve every carried a pocketknife with any regularity you know how easy it is to become attached to having one with you. After a couple years they become more of an appendage than a tool. If you are like me and you prefer to carry the same knife you even develop strong sentimental attachment to it. I purchased my first Spyderco knife as a reward for making assistant manager at Hoffritz for Cutlery in 1989 at my first full time job. Almost a hundred dollars was a lot to spend on a pocketknife back then and when my take home pay was two hundred dollars a week, I had to put money aside for a few months to afford it. Part of the appeal with that model in particular and why I had to have it were the groundbreaking features. It could be opened and closed one handed, had a serrated blade and a clip for attaching it to the inside of your pocket. While standard features on almost every pocket knife today, they were unique to that knife in 1989.
I got mad at myself the week I bought it after bending and chipping the end of the blade while using it to break the seal on a mason jar. I would cringe slightly for my stupidity every time I used it after that because I knew better than to use a knife as anything but a knife. It served as a reminder not to do stupid **** and to think. It went on to become the knife I used to open my college acceptance letter. I used it to breakdown down boxes, cut rope or anything else that needed while working several jobs from subway to The Diner on Sycamore. It served as a reminder of being young and all the good times that came with those jobs. It helped me get her phone number after helping to cut the rope she was used to tie down her trunk latch within the parking lot of the hardware store (great summer romance). Lots of great memories associated with it.
I tried many times over the years to replace that knife with little success. The first was the year following college graduation. I was traveling Europe with my girlfriend at the time (now x-wife). She replaced it for me with a newer and better model on my twenty sixth birthday. That knife came from someone who I loved. It travelled Europe with me. It even saved me from getting beat up by two pick pockets on a train platform in Barcelona Spain after I caught them trying to rob me. It went everywhere with me for the next decade and a half. But, for some reason it never managed to replace my original knife. For whatever reason, some part of me regretted losing and still missed that Spyderco Economy model knife I saved for and bought when I was eighteen.
Fast forward twenty-five years, several pocketknives in my drawer and I’m hanging out with my twenty-year-old nephew who also has a strong affinity for utilitarian pocketknives. He has three and has his favorite among them. He differs from me though. Where I have an affinity for Spyderco knives he has an affinity for Benchmade knives. I told him I wish I still had that original knife as I’d love to hand it down to him. In part because I want to sway him over to the better knife brand
and in part because it’s a way to share some of my personal history with him. With the Corona lock down we all have a lot of time on our hands. With his affinity for knives, I decided that I was going to find him the perfect Spyderco to meet his needs one that would hopefully come to mean as much to him as my lost knife had meant to me.
There’s a lot of great places to look but Ebay is probably the best since you can find old new stock going back thirty years. There are knives on there that you won’t anywhere else. I don’t know how much time I put into my search. Many hours as I relaxed watching movies while saving one knife after another here and there to my watchlist, saved for later review as I narrowed down to what I hoped would be the perfect knife for him.
Occasionally I’d come across both new old stock and used copies of my Spyderco economy but went right past them. If I bought another copy of that model it would need to be branded with the Hoffritz logo like mine had been. Then it happened, after looking at thousands and thousands of knives, I stumbled on a listing that had “Hoffritz branded” in the description. I took a look, but the knife was to well used and had a chip in the blade. I thought meh!
It put the idea in my head so I decided to do a few searches for “Hoffritz” branded Spydercos anyway in the hopes of finding a knife in better condition. No luck, it was the only Hoffritz branded Spyderco in any model on Ebay. So, I went back to the original listing and for seventy dollars I thought what the ****, I’ll give it to my nephew and he'll probably stick it in a drawer. However, as an engineering student, he’ll enjoy the engineering influences this model had on shaping modern pocketknife designs. It would also be an opportunity to share a little personal history around the knife I loved and lost and what it meant to me.
A week later the used Spyderco showed up well packaged in my mailbox. I used my current Spyderco to open it. My current knife is a ridiculously high end (meaning I overpaid) and rare Caly 3 model with carbon fiber scales, stainless bolsters, deep pocket wire clip and a very very rare Damascus blade. I get compliments on it almost every time I take it out of my pocket. Not only is this a nicer knife but I’ve now carried it twice as long and gotten more use out of it than my original knife but it’s still not the one I lost.
Removing the Ebay knife from it’s packaging I noted how it was in much better condition than the photos led me to believe and was actually in almost identical condition to the well cared for knife I lost. Looking at the chip in the blade, I also noted that it was double chipped like mine had been. Turning it over, I paused. The tip was not only chipped, it was bent in the exact same place and exact same angle mine had been. Nah, can’t be. Immediately, I flipped it over to look at that the end of the handle. There’s the small scratch I put in it opening a bottle of Bass Ale at the yellow house following the Cramps concert at Bogarts in 1990. Not possible, this could not be my knife. I couldn’t’ have unknowingly bought my own knife, the knife I lost twenty-five years ago and still on occasion felt mild pangs of regret for losing from an E-bay seller on a whim.
Stepping back, was this just wishful thinking. I wasn’t imaging the chip that I refused to fully sharpen out because I didn’t want to reshape the blade. Or the bend that reminded me what an unthinking dumbass I can be every so little every time I opened and used it. Or that scratch in the handle that reminded me a second time not to do stupid **** and to think.
I emailed the seller on Ebay to ask where he got it hoping he could confirm it came from somewhere in Southeastern Ohio or that he’d found it while in school at OU. He wasn’t sure, he trades in a lot of pocketknives. However, he’s in western Pennsylvania, less than two hundred miles from where I lost my knife twenty-five years ago and not on the other side of the country like I expected.
Hoffritz stores went out of business in 1990, the logo alone makes it a rare knife. Add the chip, the bend, the scratch and the overall condition and it is the knife I lost. Someone found it and probably not having a use for it put in a drawer. Eventually it made its way to a collector who put it on Ebay and twenty-five years later I bought it back in almost the exact same condition I lost it in. It was in such identical condition that I was most likely the last person to sharpen it over twenty-five years ago.
Now, how cool is that?
. Cheers, Radioactive
