The Cutting Edge

The official blog of Knife Depot

Search results: "amazon" (page 1 of 3)

How Amazon Profits Off Counterfeits

Fake knives are a big concern. If you buy from eBay or some less than stellar sites like Alibaba, there’s a fair chance that the knife you get is a fake.

But, if you were to buy a knife from a site like Amazon, it has to be real, right? Not exactly.

We have had a lot of complaints about the way Amazon does business over the years. For example, earlier this year, we wrote about how the massive online store restricts the sale of legal knives to some people. Back in 2013, we also wrote about how sites like Amazon have a leg up selling knives against smaller businesses such as ours thanks to Google.

But, one of our biggest complaints with Amazon has been the fact that they are plagued with counterfeits. Now, a recent story reveals that Amazon not only sells counterfeits frequently but benefits when fakes are sold and does little to rectify the problem.

Amazon ‘Thrives’ from Fakes

An article in the Los Angeles Times reported on fake products, including fake charging cables, and how they’ve affected legitimate businesses.

spyderco counterfeit

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Not only has the platform avoided any serious backlash for allowing the sale of fake goods, it’s actually thrived from it, say more than two dozen brand owners, e-commerce consultants, attorneys, investigators and public policy experts.

Counterfeiters help pressure brands to sell their wares on the site. Companies that avoid Amazon risk letting counterfeiters determine how their goods appear to customers on the most influential e-commerce site — ceding control, for instance, of which pictures are used to promote a product and which colors and sizes are offered.

The spread of cheaper knockoffs can also put pressure on authentic sellers and brands to lower their prices, helping Amazon win more customers.

The company has resisted calls to do more to police its site and address claims by businesses that they are losing millions in lost sales and reputational harm, according to experts.

One of the biggest culprits is the third-party sellers on Amazon. When you buy something off Amazon, a third-party seller will often fulfill the orders, but they may be selling fakes. Even when Amazon itself fulfills the order, the products in their inventory may be fake without them knowing about it.

Continue reading

Is Amazon Restricting the Sale of Legal Knives to Some States?

There are hundreds of reasons not to buy knives from Amazon.

Not only is there a possibility you’d get a fake knife but it is also crippling small businesses like ours. (Oh, and Amazon also treat employees like crap.)

And now Amazon has started preventing law-abiding citizens from buying and shipping knives to certain states.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how long this has been going on or how widespread it is, but a customer brought it to our attention. Here’s the lowdown.

A customer tried to purchase a Kershaw Link from Amazon and have it shipped somewhere in Long Island, New York. However, upon checkout, they got a notice saying the item “can’t be shipped to your selected address.” So, he wisely bought the folder from Knife Depot instead.

Why?

New York & Massachusetts Restricted

After I did a little digging, I found one of the earliest incidence of a restricted knife purchase was in 2012 on a forum post at NY Firearms. That was chocked up to a possible error.

The issue didn’t seem to start gaining more attention until late 2017 when someone posted on Blade Forums about a knife purchase not going through. However, this one was from Massachusetts.

I did my own little experiment trying to buy and ship a Kershaw Cryo G-10 to an address in New York City.

This is what I got:

I thought it could just be because the address was in New York City so I picked an address in Central New York (Syracuse, to be exact). The same result.

Continue reading

Why Does Google Lust for Amazon and Loathe Knife Depot?

Imagine if the most powerful Internet company — one that handles 100 billion searches for information a month — prohibited everyone except for the world’s largest e-commerce store to advertise for a specific product. What would that look like? It would look like this.


Above is a screenshot for the search term “throwing knives,” one of our most popular categories at Knife Depot.

We used to to run Google AdWords for throwing knives, but in May, Google turned off all ads for the search term “throwing knives” after they designated it a weapon. Obviously, we disagreed with such a characterization, but weren’t surprised, as in March Google had prohibited all ads for “Assisted Opening Knives” and canceled our entire AdWords account because we sold completely legal spring-assisted knives.

We were eventually reinstated on AdWords, but now for the second time Google has banned our ads for specific products, while Amazon continues to advertise for those products. And it doesn’t end with throwing knives either. Who’s currently running ads for the term “assisted- opening knives?”


Yeah, you guessed, Amazon is in the house, joined by Walmart and Cabella’s. It’s a mega-brand menage-a-trois, with poor Knife Depot relegated to the sideline.

If you looked a year ago, there would have been probably close to a dozen sites advertising for this term. Now, it seems that Google has managed to successfully eliminate all advertisers except for their big-spending compadres.

Why does Google Apply Its Adwords Policy Unfairly?

That’s a fantastic question and one that your pals at Knife Depot have asked ad nauseum to AdWords support staff over the last year. Over hundreds of emails, Google has rarely countered our claims that they are favoring big brands. In fact, in one email this spring a customer service representative affirmed our point:

“I am still waiting on an answer to my reply where I asked for a universal enforcement of the policy OR we allow knife depot back online. I replied and said, I refuse to tell knife-depot they need to remove a product category that 7 other competitors are advertising & selling the same products. I then named each domain, called out the double standard, and requested that they state the clear differences that allows these competitors to serve & knife depot to be suspended. Still waiting on this reply.“

Google’s AdWords support staff is an intractable bureaucracy that makes decisions based on policy edicts that they seemingly have no power to influence or change. Clearly, one huge element of that policy is to never take down ads or suspend the accounts of big-spending AdWords partners. Continue reading

Top 25 Worst Knife Names Ever

This post was first published in 2017 and updated in October 2023.

They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet… but if they were called stenchblossoms or crapweeds, I imagine they would be a bit less appealing.

The same thing goes for a knife. The almost universally acclaimed Ontario RAT Model 1 would still perform just as well if it were called the Ontario Elephant Earwax 7, but it might not be quite as popular.

While I acknowledge naming something is extremely difficult (I considered naming my son Humphrey), it can really kill the whole vibe of a knife. So I scoured the Internet and my memory bank to come up with a list of the worst knife names around. Many of these knives are well-made and perfectly usable but simply have a name that is off-putting.

This is my personal preference, so take that as you will. If you have any to add, let me know in the comments.

Note: I excluded custom knifemakers because they have a little more creative leeway. I also tried to exclude knives with people’s names. For example, I dislike all the Brian Tighe-related pun names (Tighe Rade, My Tighe, Tighe Coon, etc), but it’s the guy’s name so I let them be.

Finally, the LA Police Gear “The Best F***ing Knife” S35VN Every Day Carry Folding Knife (yes, that’s the full name) was considered for this list but I couldn’t figure out whether the overly descriptive and braggadocios name was so over the top it was the best name ever or the worst. I decided to leave it off for now.

25. Kershaw Wild Wild Turkey

Let’s start with one that’s a bit innocuous: the Kershaw Wild Wild Turkey. This now discontinued knife was actually a well-made and sleek gentleman’s folder. The steel was ATS 34 with titanium handles (if I’m correct). The name Wild Turkey is already a bit silly but the addition of another Wild takes things to another level.

I think Kershaw learned its lesson because future iterations of the knife were simply named Wild Turkey. Still, despite the name, this knife is still sought after by aficionados.

24. TOPS Felony Stop

Next we have the first of many TOPS Knives with the Felony Stop. Knives already get a bad rap because of their misuse by a few individuals and you don’t want to call attention to that fact. The name Felony Stop is a bit confusing anyway. Is it supposed to be an instruction to stop a felony or is the knife itself a felony stop? Either way, the knife wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t say FELONY in big bold letters right on the knife.

The knife, designed by the great Laci Szabo, is said to be only intended for law enforcement personnel and specialists, so take that as you will.

23. CRKT Hootenanny

Hootenanny is an Appalachian colloquialism that originally started off as a Scottish word meaning party or celebration. It has since evolved to mean thingamajig or whatchamacallit or doohickey. So when you say pass me that “Hootenanny,” it just sounds funny.

Continue reading

Legislation on ‘Gravity Knives’ in NY Moves Forward… Again

 

The arrests of knife owners in New York continues.

More than four years after the Village Voice published an exposé on how vague wording in the statutes have led to thousands of arrests against mostly minority knife owners in New York City, the arrests are still going on.

Even after lobbying from Knife Rights and the passage of two bills by the state’s legislature clarifying the law (which were ultimately vetoed), police are still using gravity knives as an excuse to arrest law-abiding citizens.

But, “tenacious dems” — as Knife Rights puts it  — have continued to work on stopping the arrests in New York City. The state assembly just passed a bill that would completely remove “gravity knives” from New York criminal statutes. It passed unanimously. The state senate will soon vote on a companion bill, and I expect it to be passed near unanimously as well.

What happens after that remains a question.

Continue reading

7 Knives Sent to Space

According to the aptly named website howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com, there are currently three people in space.

Although NASA retired the Space Shuttle program a few years back, there are still grand plans for sending people back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon (with Buzz Aldrin a close second), we thought it’d be interesting to take a look back at the knives that have gone into space.

Camillus Mil-K

Close-up view of pocket knife, part of the Friendship 7 Survival Kit (A19670176001), August 8, 2013. Smithsonian

Since the first people were sent into space, they have almost always had a knife within reach. I’m not sure whether the first man in space — cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin — carried a knife (though I’m sure he did). However, we do know what the first American man carried into space.

According to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Alan Shepherd carried the Camillus Mil-K Demo Knife in his kit during the United States’ first manned mission to space on May 5, 1961. This was the US-equivalent of the classic Swiss Army Knife made by Victorinox. The version Shepherd carried had a tang stamped with 1959.

Unfortunately, Camillus filed for bankruptcy in 2007 before being bought out by Acme United.

Randall Made Knives Model 17 Astro

This knife has one of the coolest stories. At the time, NASA had this philosophy that if something didn’t exist, it would simply make it. The team needed a survival knife for emergencies and couldn’t find one suitable for them. So astronaut Gordon Cooper and NASA doctor William Douglas reached out to Bo Randall of Randall Made Knives to create a special design.

Continue reading

Why Do People Hate Assisted-Openers?

If you were to peruse some popular knife forums, you’d think the invention of the assisted-opening mechanism was the worst thing to happen to the knife world.

The truth is that the average user could not care less whether the knife is spring-assisted. As long as it opens reliably and is relatively cheap, most people barley notice.

So, why do most knife nuts seem to hate assisted-opening knives with a passion? These are the most common arguments against assisted blades.

(Note: I’m being the devil’s advocate and citing some common arguments. I honestly don’t have a preference between assisted-openers and manual folders.)

1. Assisted-openers are dangerous

One of the biggest complaints about assisted-openers is that they’re dangerous. There are stories from people across the internet who say an assisted opener engaged while in the pocket. Those with flipper tabs are likely more dangerous because they can open up pretty easily when some pressure is applied to the edge of the closed knife. (This is a problem that can be mostly prevented with right-handed tip-down carry where the pocket would help keep it closed.)

I’ve carried assisted-openers before and never had one open. However, I have had an unassisted knife open slightly in my pocket. I don’t remember the circumstances that caused it, but any type of knife can be dangerous. Take a look at what could happen with an auto:

A first for me. Boker Kalashnikov opened in my pocket. from knives

Some have even complained that the strength of the assisted open is so powerful that the knife feels like it’s going to jump out of the hand.

2. Safety lock negates any advantages

To combat the first complaint, many knives come with safety mechanisms that keep the blade closed. For example, many Kershaw SpeedSafe models have a little peg that slides behind the blade to keep it from opening up accidentally. While it does increase the safety of the knife, it also counteracts the quickness and accessibility of the knife.

Continue reading

How to Tell If You Have a Real Damascus Steel Blade

Real Damascus Steel Knife

The knife world is plagued with fakes and frauds.

People on eBay are trying to pass off $400 Sebenzas as real and sellers on Amazon are unknowingly selling fake CRKT and SOGs to unsuspecting customers.

Because of all the tricksterism plaguing the knife community, I often get asked whether a knife is real or fake. While I recently wrote a guide on how to spot a counterfeit knife, it didn’t address another popular question — is my Damascus knife a fake?

Damascus knives are becoming more popular and more prevalent from the most popular knife brands like Spyderco (with the Endura and others) to lesser known brands like BucknBear.

What makes people even more confused about the legitimacy of Damascus steel is the vast price differences. Could a $50 knife with Damascus steel be real when you see other Damascus blades topping the $500 mark?

Let’s dig deeper.

What is Damascus?

Before determining whether your Damascus is fake or real, we should first define what Damascus actually is.

Damascus is that wavy pattern in steel that looks exotic and downright gorgeous.

Continue reading

How to Spot a Counterfeit Knife

This week is International Fraud Awareness Week.

The global effort to raise awareness and minimize the incidence of fraud is wide reaching. Although you may not think fraud affects you so much, fraud reaches every facet of society — whether it’s fraudulent products, fraudulent charities, and those scams we see peppered in every comments section.

While many think knives are safe from fraud, there’s a huge industry of fraud surrounding knives, and it’s important to be aware.

We’ve written about how to spot counterfeits before in an old post, but I thought we’d update with some additional information and tips.

Signs of a Counterfeit Knife

Let’s take a look at a few telltale signs that you may have bought a counterfeit knife. One of these alone isn’t necessarily evidence but can be an indication.

Sign #1: Deals that are too good to be true.

People always mention this as a surefire sign of a counterfeit knife — which is a knife with all the branding of an original but from a different source. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.

It may be tempting to see a $150 knife sold for $50 and think, that’s a deal I can’t pass up! Unfortunately, no one is going to sell a knife for that cheap if it’s the real deal.

When it gets harder is when people sell the $150 knife for $120. Although the discount isn’t as steep, it is a discount, especially if people claim it’s new or out of the box.

Sign #2: You bought from a disreputable vendor.

eBay

Don’t take this the wrong way, but eBay is a cesspool of criminals and con artists looking to make a quick buck off of you. While it’s possible to find good deals on eBay, the auction site has a poor reputation as a hotbed for counterfeits in the knife community.

Well-done ESEE-3 fake

Even buying knives at or near the original price is not indication that it’s legitimate. Even seeing the images on the site may not be reliable, since they could have taken a picture of the real thing and then send the fake.

Continue reading

10 Ways to Store or Display Your Knife Collection

If you’re a knife collector like me then you know the importance of knife storage. My knives are considered invaluable to me, and for most collectors, they hold a certain sentimental value, so it only makes sense to store them properly and preserve their beauty and longevity for generations to come.

Keeping them sharp, oiled, dry and out of the sun is key to ensuring they stay rust free and last forever, but how you store them can also be crucial. Throwing your knives in a drawer and letting them get beat up is a bad way to go.

Here are some different ways to store your extensive knife collection:

1. Knife Bag

The knife bag is a great option for folders, especially if you like carrying your knives from time to time. Brands like Zero Tolerance, Benchmade, and Case all have great storage bags for knives that come in an array of sizes.

Bags can be made from top grain leather, vinyl, canvas, and heavy-duty polyester with insides that include felt, thick foam padding, and soft cloth material for scratch-free storage. Most come with adjustable shoulder straps for easy carry and zippered or Velcro closures for safe keeping.

My Pick: The Spyderco SpyderPac large bag is a hard-to-beat proven seller. Made of black heavy duty polyester denier with large clear individual viewing pockets. This is a great solution for outdoorsmen who like to not only transport their folders but store and display them as well. Choose between the small or large version.

  • Small measures 16″x18″ holds 18 folders with a MSRP $39.95
  • Large measures 25″x8″ holds 32 folding knives MSRP of $49.95

2. Protector Cases

Protector cases — like those used for guns — are a surprisingly effective method for storing knives. Well, maybe not that surprising since they’re designed to hold guns and other gear, but the cases that feature egg crate material hold knives in place extremely well. On top of that, many of these cases lock, so you don’t have to worry about little ones with candied fingers getting in.

Continue reading

« Older posts

© 2024 The Cutting Edge

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

123