How to Date Case Knives
The W. R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co. has produced folding and fixed-blade knives since 1889. Case knives are highly-sought collectibles, and enthusiasts collect them by model (or pattern), by handle material and by year. Case makes it easy to identify a knife by all those factors with distinctive stamps. You can date earlier patterns within a few years, and more recent models to the exact year.
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Instructions
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Look for the tang stamp on the base of the blade of the knife. Every Case knife (both folding and fixed-blade) includes a tang stamp, and every such stamp includes the word "Case."
These stamps have changed over the years. Some have two Xs, signifying the company's proprietary two-step heating process, and others include the word "Tested." There are some that include the full name of the company, with "Bradford, PA," while recent stamps include dots and Xs.
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Date your knife by matching the tang stamp to a given period. The company has used 33 distinct stamps on its folding knives since 1905, and 17 on its fixed-blade knives. The company maintains a gallery on its website of those stamps and has published a chart of the stamps by year.
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Look for dots on the tang stamp. Beginning in 1970, Case used dots to signify the exact year of manufacture of its folding knives. The first year had the maximum number of dots, and Case removed a dot every year. A folding knife made in 1970, for example, had ten dots, while the one made in 1971 had nine dots, and so on until 1979, which had one dot.
With those ten dots gone, Case introduced a new stamp in 1980 with a new stamp, also with ten dots. Also in 1980, the company started using the same dot convention on its fixed-blade knives.
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Look for two lines of intermingled dots and Xs, sandwiching the word "CaseXX." Case introduced this numbering convention in 2000. From 2000 through 2005, Case subtracted dots, and from 2006 through 2009, subtracted one X. For example, a knife with the tang stamp like this:
.x.x.
CaseXX
x.x.x
was manufactured in 2000. One with a tang stamp like this:
xx
CaseXX
xx.x
was manufactured in 2004.
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