Jay Fisher - Fine Custom Knives

I've made knives for a very long time. It's natural then, that some of them will show up on the secondary market for resale. As I've written on my "Business of Knifemaking" page, at this bookmark, "Questions About Previously Sold Knives I've Made," I don't generally answer questions about my earlier knives. This is because people who ask mainly want an evaluation, a price, a date, and a price, and the materials, and the price... you get it. They are almost always after the price that a knife originally sold for, and from that, an idea of what the knife is currently worth.

This is because they are reselling the knife. They don't simply want to know what the value is, they aren't thinking, "...since my granddad bought this knife way back in the dark ages, it must be worth a lot and I just want to know how much Granddad cared—" They are always selling or thinking of buying the knife, and need a starting point. Simple enough.

When I started making knives, like most makers, I sold them for what the market would bear, in other words, what they were worth at the time, in the place they were sold, based on the value of the workmanship, desire, reputation, materials, design, and all the typical stuff that artists and craftsmen use to value their work. This is always balanced by the public who buys the knife; in reality, they set the price by the completion of their purchase.

My first knife sold for $30.00 and was probably worth a lot more. For many of my early years (in the early 1980s), I never sold a knife more than $300.00. That was simply the market back then, and I did all right. As the years and then decades passed, my work improved dramatically, as it should be, the market overwhelmed me with orders, and the prices continued to climb. This is natural and logical with most successful artists, and isn't surprising.

That's the general background, but now I present the curious case of the "Sandia."

By the way, Sandia means "watermelon" in Spanish, and the Sandia mountains overlook Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico, my home state. The bright colors of sunsets, often in winter, undoubtedly influenced the name of the watermelon mountains. There are no watermelons grown there; it's about the color. The peaks on the spine of the blade kind of reminded me of the mountain peaks.

My "Sandia" pattern was a very early pattern, you can see it on my "Patterns" page, in Group 45.Don't let the number 45 fool you, since the knives in this group are hidden tang patterns, I photographed them much later than the lower-numbered patterns. This pattern actually dates back to about 1985, before I was a full-time knifemaker. I actually call this "Sandia Jr." In the group photo, you can see the pattern just above it is a larger version named "Sandia." At the links in the group, you can see the little knife in photos. It was a popular knife back in the late 1980s to early 1990s, and I made and sold a lot of them.

The neat thing about the "Sandia" pattern was that I could use relatively small pieces of gemstone, stacked together, with metal or fiber spacers, and finish the piece as a "stacked tang" or more properly, a "hidden tang" knife. I hard-soldered the threaded stud onto the stainless steel tang stub, and drilled a small set of "doughnuts" in stone and metal, and stacked them on the tang with jeweler's quality epoxy, all held in place with a threaded pommel. The knife handles were then shaped, ground, sanded, and finished. I used a lot of brass and nickel silver back then.

My idea with the Sandias was an affordable, small knife, since most people only use the point and the first few inches of blade on this type of knife. The Sandias are small, with a 3" blade and are about 6" overall.

For completely educational purposes, I'm going to present the exact information that was used to resell this knife in 2018. I won't mention the name of the reselling dealer; you can look that up on the internet if you wish, by putting the appropriate terms into your search engine.

You're probably asking yourself, "Why would Jay Fisher bother to comment on a knife he made in the late 1980s being resold by a dealer in 2018?"

I'll let you see the photos, and read the description, and then I'll surprise you with some actual facts that were grossly misrepresented to the buyer of this pretty little knife. Read on; I think you'll find this curious indeed!

Sandia: The Claims and the Truth

People can be quite liberal with the truth. Perhaps this won't matter much after I die, but while I'm still alive and making knives, I feel that I owe it to my clients, supporters, and enthusiasts overall to speak the truth about my knives. I'll go through the dealer's presentation line by line, and let you be the judge of the comments, based on what you see in the photographs. Please understand that I'm not blaming anyone in particular for these misrepresentations; it could be that the dealer or owner was simply presenting what was presented to him. I do have records of the sale of every knife, and I know who bought the knife and when and for what price, but that information is private and may not have been available to the dealer or current owner for his website resale.

There. In the previous paragraph, I've absolved all current participants in any wrongdoing. For the very sake of the truth, and more so for the sake of the current owner, since this knife has been resold, I think it's only fair that the artist and maker (that's me) brings some things to light:

• First and overall, I appreciate the glowing commentary about one of my earlier knives. These were great little knives, and this one was obviously taken care of extremely well, since it looks hardly used at all!
• The use of the word "Custom" is incorrect. This was not, ever, a custom knife. This knife was made and presented to the public for sale, and was sold at a show. A custom knife is made to order; this was NOT a custom knife. More about custom knives here.
• The knife is listed as "Super rare." That's a subjective claim; I literally made dozens of these knives, and you can see a bunch of them on my patterns page and the link I listed above. I suppose you could say all my work is rare when compared to a manufacturer who makes thousands of one particular style.
• The so-called "hang-tag." This is a serious issue. I used to attach a business card to every knife I sold, so that the owner would know some particulars about the knife. At the knife show that this knife was sold in the early 1990s, I wrote the price on the tag. The actual price that I wrote on this tag was $245.00. I never used a $ (dollar sign) when I wrote these prices, because I read somewhere that buyers are discouraged when they see it. So, on this tag, I simply wrote "245-". Look carefully at the photo of the writing. Someone, sometime, somewhere added a "1" to the front of the string of numbers! If you look closely, you can see that the ink is different than the ink I used, you can tell it's a watery, uncertain mark, as if the person writing this was afraid of being caught. Well, guess what? They are caught! This is a blatant, obvious forgery by someone who wanted to sell the knife for over FIVE TIMES THE ORIGINAL SALES PRICE! Wow, just wow!
• "The site is a bit hard to navigate..." well, you found your way here didn't you? You try building the largest, most comprehensive singular knifemaker website in the world with over 600 pages and in the top 10 percent of all websites on the planet and see how much information you have to present... sigh.

Okay, there's the scoop. I can tell from my lousy, early laser printer with the faded toner on the business card and the Magdalena, New Mexico address that this knife was sold in the early 1990s (plus, I have records). The neat thing to present is that a knife that was sold back then, for however much it was recently sold, was easily considered over five times its original worth in value! I don't know how much it went for on the dealer's site in 2018, but the owner and the dealer certainly made a lot of money!

There are very few investments that could see such a dramatic increase, but this is almost expected in fine handmade knives. If nothing else, it proves that investing in fine, handmade knives by established knifemakers is still one of the top investments you could make.

I wish I had benefited from the extra $1000.00 falsely claimed as the original price. I could have really used the money back in the 1990s. Alas, someone else made more money than the artist on the piece. Such is the reality of life. I'm so glad that I can support so many individuals with my work! Making money off the labor and sweat of the artist—this is a common theme in the arts and human culture. Think of how many people have benefitted financially from the labor of artists generally in man's history when they had nothing to do with the creation of the work. Sobering, isn't it?

Now, you know the truth about the little Sandia.

Welcome to the internet, where you must have a knowledgeable and fully functional bogus statement filter, called a B.S. filter for short—

This reminds me somewhat of the misrepresentation of the cost of one of my popular "PJLT" knives on one of the forums. The comment there was to disparage my work, but if you read more, you'll realize how laughably ridiculous these lies and exaggerations are. More about that on my "Business of Knifemaking" page at this bookmark.

The Saga Continues!

In late February of 2022, I received this great email from a kind person:

Yes, it seems that legends never die! Below are a group of screenshot photos this kind gentleman send to back up his story. Please click on them for an enlargement. I've not included the seller's name or link on eBay; he doesn't seem to be the original buyer (and perhaps the one who marked the extra "1" on the business card back/tag.

Please also note the "new" price! Wow, $1,600.00 for a knife that I originally sold for $245.00! Gosh, I wish I could go back and reap the rewards of appreciation that happens here! Imagine making a knife, and seeing it sold for over six and a half times the original price! I don't think the best real estate has that kind of appreciation. Of course, with real estate, you can't just mark an extra "1" on the price tag and inflate the value... or can you?

Special thanks to C.B. in Tasmania, Australia for sending this info.