It's been a fun ride. Idk that I'm altogether out, but it is looking like so. I don't know what to say... it's somewhat sad but mostly it's liberating as well. There’s a mature point into this. Then it’s like what we say about more expensive knives: there’s diminishing returns in trying more/too many. It tends to cloud clarity – the desire to try something new again overpowers the pleasure taken in what you have right there, and once you get something new, you might not go back there because familiarity, natural handling, ease of use, can be distorted entirely into “boring” when in that frantic frame of mind. Sometimes you latch upon it, but sometimes you miss it completely.
Yet the process has some importance: there’s too many better things for you out there not to discover at least some of them. The other side of the coin being obviously that you could probably just adapt to what better knife you buy first, if you choose something better indeed. You made it work with worse all of your life! Buuuut... something’s out there that “better” doesn’t even come close to. I’d say the process is even crucial when you come to the often natural point of such a spree: having a custom made for you. If it’s gonna be worth it, you gotta know, really know, what you like. If anything it helps spotting WHO you’d like to deal with most.
What else... Yeah, I can now totally safely browse all my favorite vendors, as well as BST. I don't "attach" myself to what I'm seeing there anymore. I still browse, enough to keep in the loop, so to speak. I do still like the browsing itself, but when there's no drive attached, it's really not the same...
Anecdotally, somewhere in July I seemed to have elected buying a Bunka with a deal on SKS. Looked like fun, but I still didn't feel much of anything. Two weeks later it was like my bank account checking back on me: "We seem to have some extra money set aside there, buddy, what are we gonna do with that?". Well, “we” bought about 12 books and there was still some extra left aside. There are upsides.
Another upside is a “truer” connection – and before anyone gets pissed, I’ll be describing one type of it, but for you it can be something else like collecting many specific units/families, or types, or whatever... but it became “truer”: you were no more purchasing out of the rush of it, but patiently curating them.
Yet reading the other comments here, I realized that amidst a population of folks coming to something like an endgame, there is a decisive tendency to cut down the collection below 10 knives or so because it’s otherwise... aaaah... “inconvenient to manage” if you’ll allow that expression to try and sum it all. I guess I can allow professional cooks with a “home below 10” and a “work below 10” making it 20 but essentially the same.
However, and even more interesting, there is also a definitive correlation of folks buying “cheapest good” because they’re onto something else, which tends to be either making one’s own knives, either major customizations to knives purchased, or both, and all combinations/derivations thereof. The “falling down hobby” transfers onto something healthier, that is at once more difficult, more creative, and at least feeling like being a more productive process to an even better reward.
I tend to be one of the many (I’d say most) that is a bit of all of that. Right now I have 7 and they all get fairly well used. Even those that perhaps were not love at first try - those that would typically go BST within 1-3 months not so long ago - I got familiar with, and they've dug a place by my side. But few have any real hold onto me. The ones that have the most being the ones I’ve done some decisive thinning work on, altering geometry in a no-going-back manner. One of these guys was also rehandled by a close friend of mine – and it’s my cheapest J-blade, and it ain’t going anywhere...
But most if not all I still feel ain’t “ultimate” or “essential”. “Endgame Collection” is not an appropriate wording to me, although I subscribe to the “Endgame” part entirely: that IS exactly the right word for it. The Endgame isn’t a collection however. It is a frame of mind entirely that also encompasses that any of these things ain’t really forever. Not through use and wear certainly, neither by design or need even, yet mostly because the eye of the beholder is just ethereal and temporary after all. The Endgame is seeing that there is NO way to ensure your crown jewel K$ knife won’t be the rusty piece of apparent trash someone on KKF will recognize as potential greatness of the past and make of it his pet project to post about – in 100 years. And by the way, all of what I just described ALSO applies to Chess, if you have a modicum of lateral thinking and knowledge of the game and its evolution.
So this is Endgame for sure where I am concerned - that new reality. I'm celebrating a full six months of "sobriety" as we speak (that's never-seen-before kinda sh!t since I tumbled down in there - meaning I didn't buy any knife since then), and I don’t think I will really buy that Bunka or anything anytime so soon. Not to add up. I might buy and sell - trade "up". I might just sell as well. I figure, most probably. Downsizing, no hyphens, just obvious to do.
So that’s what I wanted to say that may tap into some more collective insight. I’ll post about the knives and a few personal thoughts later on. Strictly personal afterthought, it will be indeed.
Just to make sure this is interpreted to the best of the scope I was having into it: for sure the very lowly priced knives/project knives have no real reselling value. They often need some work, and where you’d be at when selling them, the general crowd might sniff upon. It’d would not only take an understanding buyer to hit some low level scale of a tangible resale value, it would take one that basically is fully on with your work and doesn’t feel like he can do the same or better just buying the damn knife new. Tough crowd to meet on KKF,
But if you’re about to cry and make a stand on grounds of reflective hypocrisy, think twice: the endgame KKF’er has known long before the Endgame that cheap “project” knives, or cheap any knife at all, are a one-for-all move: they never have realistic resale value. They at best add nicely upwards of a proposed bundle, or you’re a KKF-certified grinding/sharpening voodoo that can push it single to satisfactory value. I’m in Endgame never having been any near that much. That’s just how it likely goes.
