So…anybody out there know anything about Wish.com? I somehow stumbled upon ’em in reference to this big sale on Benchmade knives they seem to be having. After a cursory lookover of the website I downloaded their app and started poking around a little, seeing as how 1) I’ve always been a knife guy; II) Benchmade in particular has for years now been my edged weapon of choice, and C) I’m always searching for a bargain.
But these prices make “bargain” look positively exorbitant. I mean, a North Fork folder, stabilized-wood grips, not my preferred style but whatevs, usually seen at between two-three hundo, on offer at Wish for…hmm, lemme see now…
HMMMM…
Or how about, say, something in a fixed-blade? Sturdy, reliable, handy for all kinds of jobs; one can never have too many of those around, and the only one I currently own is a gorgeous Arkansas Toothpick-style blade, custom made for me on the cheap by a local knifemaker (BEWARE: SEVERE DIGRESSION AHEAD) who worked as a night security guard at the old NCNB building downtown, one of my dailies when I was working for Airborne Express. I got to know the guy, name of Bob, quite well over several years; night shift, for him and me both, was decidedly lacking in the frenetic pace of activity seen during the daytime hours. So most nights, we had plenty of leisure to just relax and chew the fat for a while. Which, once he figured out I was the same kind of dyed in the wool blade enthusiast he was himself, we did.
Eventually, he offered to run me up a rig of my own design from the ground up—with hand-tooled ginyoowine leather boot-sheef to match, no less—for the low, low, fire-sale price of only 90 smackeroos (any fellow cut ‘n’ slash folks out there will know very well just what a steal that was). Needless to say, I jumped all over the deal with all feet and hands. If I recall correctly, I ran a pitcher of that purty thing here on CF not all that long ago…let me just rummage around in the Media folder and see if I can…ohhh yeah, here t’is:
You can’t tell too good from the pic, but the haft is some kind of exotic, rare South American wood, can’t remember what it’s called, which is naturally blue in color. The blue has darkened and deepened a lot over the years, but still retains a much lighter hue along the grain that makes for a lovely, stripey contrast I’ve never seen the like of. Blade is double-edged–ie, a small sword, in keeping with the Arkansas Toothpick definitional standard–and full tang. Heft and balance are perfect, as you would expect, and the blade is honed to such a fine edge I once sliced the tip of a finger off while cleaning and polishing it when I had let my attention momentarily wander—an embarrassing knife-noob fuckup I have NOT repeated since, and won’t again. I didn’t even know I’d done it till I saw all that blood beginning to smear along the blade’s entire length, upon which remarakable discovery a great gobbet of fingertip slipped slowly off the cutting edge and plopped sickeningly to the floor at my feet. Never have tried this knife as a thrower, which I’m inexperienced, untrained, and indifferent with/to anyhoo and so try to stay away from.
So where were we? Oh right, checking Wish listings for prices on Benchmade fixed-blades. Here we have a Nimravus dagger-style, tactical nylon sheath, aluminum alloy grips, asking price TWENTY WHOLE DOLLARS?!? SRSLY???
COME ON, MAN!!!!
Okay, I hate to go all gimlet-eyed cynical and suspicious-like here, I really do. My natural inclination is to be more the trusting, optimistic, and respectful type. I’ve always been a guy who prefers to assume the best of people, until they give me a good reason not to. All the same, though, I also have no desire to be a sucker or a mark, and I do NOT react at all well to being played for one.
I’ve never heard about any fly-by-nighter outfits daring to produce el-cheapo Benchmade knockoffs out there, which damned sure doesn’t mean there ain’t none. Given Benchmade’s long-established rep for quality in materials, design, and workmanship—all the moreso given its renown for NOT being excessively gentle with its pricing—it would take one ballsy sumbitch to even attempt it. But these days, who knows.
In the case of the fixed-blade linked above, the merchant is something yclept “China Knife,” which I think might possibly provide something of a minor clue as to what might really be going on here. I can tell you for certain that I have never, EVER come across ANY legit Benchmade product of ANY kind, not even a wee small whetstone, being sold that cheaply. So it seems to me these impostures can no-how no-way be on the up and up, which to me means same-same for Wish itself. Thoughts, anyone?
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Cheap junk, badly made in China. If you get it, that is. If it looks too good to be true, it usually isn’t.
No f’ing way. china knock off shit.
My money would be on no shit at all. Especially with those words in cyrillic all over the pages.
Could be. I didn’t sign up to see the web page other than behind the login screen. Yea, cyrillic is probably a clue 🙂
“…this company has a pattern of complaints, complaints on filed state that products are ordered but never received and ordered items are not as described.”
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/ecommerce/wishcom-1116-443655
It always comes back to the same eternal rule: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is, as HH said. Right after publishing this post, I realized that, and uninstalled the Wish app on my phone.
*shakes head* No familiarity with Wish.com, Mike. I usually do my knife shopping at knifeworks.com, chicagoknifeworks.com, or bladehq.com unless Amazon happens to have an exceptionally good price on something I’m looking for. (As an example, I picked up all three of my Al Mar folders at Amazon for about $40 – $50 bucks each, roughly a third of what other outlets wanted for them.)
What the others said, though: if it looks too good to be true, it’s probably a scam or a ripoff.
Just as a side note: That’s technically a dagger, Mike. An Arkansas Toothpick has a distinctive silhouette: a long, tapered triangular blade with no indents at the choil: Randall Knives makes one of the definitive patterns (at a Randall price, natch):
Randall Model 13 – Arkansas Toothpick
The photo is close to what Randall calls his Model 2 – Fighting Stiletto as opposed to the shorter Toothpick model.
Yeah, yeah, I know: nitpicking over pedantic details. But us knife nuts are kinda persnickety about those things. 🙂
Yep, a dagger is just what it is. A great ol’ big one at that, too; my one regret is that I insisted, against Bob’s urging, on a boot sheath. I clomped around in biker-style engineer boots every minute of my day back then, even in summer, so I thought a boot sheath might be cool. Don’t know why I did that, but it was a mistake. I know now that I shoulda went with a belt or some other variety of sheath instead, and was already experienced enough with knives that I should have known it back then, too. Oh well.
When I got my hands on the knife for the first time, I realized immediately that there was no way in hell a blade that long could be pulled from a boot sheath without taking my pants off in advance. In fact, that blade is so damned long you could easily run an average-size opponent completely through with it, and still have enough poking out his back to hang a few sliced vegetables on for a shishkebob, were you so inclined. Great a knife as it most definitely is, the unwieldiness means it’s never been on my daily-carry list–which may actually not be a bad thing, for more than one reason.
Yeah. If you have a belt narrow enough for the clip to fit over, the boot clip can work as a belt clip. I used to carry my Gerber like that.
I have a similar scabbard for my big Hibben Double Shadow dagger. It clips nicely to the outside of a pair of harness boots and you can draw it from there, but there’s no fucking way in hell that it’s concealable.
About the same: with a nine and a half inch blade, it’ll make a huge, ugly scar that runs from the front of the chest to out the back, with an inch or so left over. Plus, it’s got that kind of “Oh my God I don’t want to be stabbed with THAT!” mean look to it. 🙂
I’m not sure what the situation is in North Carolina, but since Oklahoma and Texas got rid of their stupider blade laws – you can open carry a sword in Texas if you want to now – I can carry it openly if I want to.
Still, I don’t. Usually, the 4″ Al Mar folder in a belt pouch is ample, and the big Hibben and it’s mate the Hibben Rambo III are just display knives these days.
Don’t.
Working or fighting knives are tempered differently than throwing knifes. You run a better than average chance of snapping the blade of your expensive dagger at the hilt using it for throwing practice.
If you want to throw, stick to the pro end throwing knives like the Hibbens or the Moellers. Expensive, but worth the price.
(And you *can* snap even a pro level thrower with enough throws at targets. I’ve done it.)
For practical purposes, I’m reminded of what a pro once said, “If I really want to throw away my knife [in a fight], I’ll just drop it at my feet – it’s easier to find later if I happen to live through it.” The odds of actually sticking a blade point first in a fight are similar to winning the Powerball.
On the other hand, it can make a dandy distraction if needed: anyone is going to flinch and duck with six inches of razor sharp steel heading at their face. Might buy you a moment to close with them and kill them… just resign yourself to getting cut while doing it.
Egg-zackly. As Marc “Animal” MacYoung once told me, First Rule in a knife fight is: EVERYBODY gets cut. Yes, you too. And he’s someone who should know.
You actually know Marc MacYoung? Or at least have met him? Cool!
He’s a personal hero of mine.
Yep, met him a couple times through my late friend Pfouts. They actually co-wrote a book or two together, one of which I still have lying around here somewhere. Pfouts was like my friend Steve Bonge, he knew absolutely EVERYBODY.
I can remember strolling around in NYC with Bonge, and the guy couldn’t walk a whole block without somebody coming up to say hi. Which was funny sometimes, because Steve was a longtime HA, and a lot of the people going out of their way to chat with him were NOT from the same social milieu–stockbrokers, artists, computer nerds, movie directors and/or actors, you name it. He’d come out to our Rodeo Bar shows and be right in the middle of a big crowd, totally encircled.
Even after he became Prez of the club it was that way. You’d think most normies would keep their distance–he always wore his cut with the HA patch on it everywhere, and even though he didn’t try to be intimidating, he was anyway; it came off him in waves that this was NOT a guy you wanted to mess with–but somehow, they never were.
Cool.
I’ve read Marc’s No Nonsense Self Defense site front to back several times along with a couple of his books. He’s one of a small handful of self defense trainers I can think of who get it on bone deep level that personal defense entails a lot more than just having a weapon.