It seems wherever there is demand/limited supply and high prices, there are scammers with fake products in the market.
While searching recently for more of an investment knife, Ive been looking at ebay as a possible marketplace and it dawned on me that it would be fairly easy to fake a Kramer knife, and at $10,000-$25,000 auction prices that it would be a pretty big payoff for very little effort.
In the watch world, Rolex considers anything not sold by an AD as not authentic. A factory worker on the line takes a single spare part home each day and builds an identical watch as he built at work with authentic parts; that is a fake. You have older or less rare authentic models updated with authentic parts to make newer designs or rarer pieces (think Newman Daytona), and those are considered fakes. Its near impossible to tell those models as fake so it all comes down to matching serial #s, COAs and paperwork...but there are no serial #s on knives.
Using Kramer as an example, someone with forging capabilities could take a mass produced Zwilling model in carbon steel (his shape and 52100 carbon steel), remove stock handle and replace it with a more premium wood, the 3 dot pins seem to be readily available to fake his trademark logo, and with basic forging equipment, could reproduce his stamp and add it to the blade. Give it a bit of use and aging and its believable that youve owned/used it for 10 years and it's real.
Now I know Bob is offering a reconditioning service and new issued COAs for his knives, which helps address this potential issue, but still doesnt eliminate it (or prevent a dishonest person from reproducing his real one and real certificate to make 10 fakes sold privately).
I recently communicated with someone on ebay who had 3 total Kramers for sale with a believable backstory of why they were for sale. He removed the listing stating he was sending back to Kramer to get the COA done and theyd be relisted. An email to him a few months later got a response that he had already sold them without COA...that really got me worrying about buying a fake
Has anyone here had experiences in fakes of higher end, rare, valuable blades? Id love to hear about how you determined it was a fake and where you came across it.
-Ron
While searching recently for more of an investment knife, Ive been looking at ebay as a possible marketplace and it dawned on me that it would be fairly easy to fake a Kramer knife, and at $10,000-$25,000 auction prices that it would be a pretty big payoff for very little effort.
In the watch world, Rolex considers anything not sold by an AD as not authentic. A factory worker on the line takes a single spare part home each day and builds an identical watch as he built at work with authentic parts; that is a fake. You have older or less rare authentic models updated with authentic parts to make newer designs or rarer pieces (think Newman Daytona), and those are considered fakes. Its near impossible to tell those models as fake so it all comes down to matching serial #s, COAs and paperwork...but there are no serial #s on knives.
Using Kramer as an example, someone with forging capabilities could take a mass produced Zwilling model in carbon steel (his shape and 52100 carbon steel), remove stock handle and replace it with a more premium wood, the 3 dot pins seem to be readily available to fake his trademark logo, and with basic forging equipment, could reproduce his stamp and add it to the blade. Give it a bit of use and aging and its believable that youve owned/used it for 10 years and it's real.
Now I know Bob is offering a reconditioning service and new issued COAs for his knives, which helps address this potential issue, but still doesnt eliminate it (or prevent a dishonest person from reproducing his real one and real certificate to make 10 fakes sold privately).
I recently communicated with someone on ebay who had 3 total Kramers for sale with a believable backstory of why they were for sale. He removed the listing stating he was sending back to Kramer to get the COA done and theyd be relisted. An email to him a few months later got a response that he had already sold them without COA...that really got me worrying about buying a fake
Has anyone here had experiences in fakes of higher end, rare, valuable blades? Id love to hear about how you determined it was a fake and where you came across it.
-Ron
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