Nice score, how did you get it for free?
I thought you'd never ask. I both love and hate telling this story.
I was out pawn shop hopping, as I used to often do, and one had some knives. Most of them were crap and they sort of just had them in a pile if it wasn't a brand name knife. They did have a couple set out separately, such a s Kershaw and a Buck, but I saw something in the pile of "crap" knives that caught my eye. At first I saw only one but when I started looking I found 3 total knives that seemed to be very out of place in this lot of crap. Two of them had the same design and had "Burnley" laser etched into each blade, the other had "Rexford" laser etched into the blade. If you know the custom knife designer world well, then you know these should never have even been on display, let alone in a pile with crusty chinese frost cutlery knives.
Now I'm not extremely knowledgeable about knives, especially when it comes to custom made stuff. In other words, I knew that the knives were of quality, but I had no idea what I had just bought.
I got them home and started to do some research and learned they were all custom made limited production knives. The two knives of the same pattern were called "Squid" made by Lucas Burnley and the other was a Mini Epicenter by Todd Rexford (1 of 10 made).
I had determined through my research these knives belonged to someone and they had been stolen from the individual, thanks to some social networking websites.
I found a way to get into contact with the individual and he was ecstatic to learn his knives were not gone forever. He agreed to reimburse me for what I paid and surprised me with the ZT Flipper, which ironically was a Todd Rexford design that ZT put into production.
All told, I am happy to have been able to make that guy's day and return something that was precious to him. I could only imagine how that would feel after believing they are long gone. But sometimes, I wish I had just put them in my safe and never did the research to learn their true value and ultimately that they where stolen.
