When does J-knife collecting become a sickness?
When I bought my first J-knife, it was not because I really 'needed' another knife—I had perfectly functional Wustofs and Sabatiers in my arsenal. My maiden J-knife purchase was either the 240 Masamoto HC or 240 UX10 gyuto—can't remember which came first. I owe my interested to browsing ChefTalk, where a poster named Boar de Laze captured my imagination.
In 2013, my wife was diagnosed with cancer—she's fine now, doing great, in remission, pretty much back to normal. During that stressful period of a couple of years, perhaps needing a distraction I went through a flurry of knife purchases—Kato, Shig, Kono Fuji, Watanabe, Gengetsu, Kochi, KS, etc. My local knife vendor (Korin) was no longer adequate—so I needed to search the world for knives I needed—CKTG, JKI, JNS, K&S, MTC, Bernal, etc.
Now that life as regained a sense of normalcy, I still find myself obsessed with 'needing' to acquire a new knife when I can afford it. The knives I have are good, though my mind rationalizes 'needs,' finding faults where non-exsists—i.e. 'need a 180 petty to complement the 150,' 'need another Mazaki as a back up to my Mazaki in case he changes his profile again,' 'need to experience Heiji's carbon,' 'need a Silverthorn boner in case someone gives me a big haunch of venison that my other other two boners can't handle,' etc.
When I was an avid surfer in Hawai'i, I was aware of a 'Surfers Anonymous' group. When the surf was cranking, it was not uncommon for surfers' to break off dates with girlfriends (or boyfriends), skip out from jobs and important work meetings, forget to pick the kids up from soccer practice, etc.
Curious if any of you feel your knife collecting has ever gotten out of control?
I did this with Martell Sujis this part year. But to balance it I bought a stainless steel gyuto, which I then sold on at cost to a local cook who really, really had wanted to buy it from Dave but waited too long to pull the trigger. It is the first knife I have sold. I have another one I am sending on right now, so 'sold to date" will equal 2, vs purchasing somewhere over 30...
