Spyderco quirks

[fredswartz]

I can understand the plastic protective
film placed on the sides of knives with
titanium side plates such as the Phoenix
but why does my Scorpius SS have the
covering on one side?

The gray Spyderco boxes are of better
quality than the Chinese red and black
boxes. Cheaper to manufacture like
most everything else. I have several
duplicate knives and one may be in the
red/black box and the other in the gray
box?? Change of box mfr's midstream?
What do the letters denote on the end
tag (LH/GH/DH) etc.?

My older Spydercos dating back to
those in simple white boxes had instructions,
warrantys etc. inside. Later boxes had
Knife Edge-U-Cation papers inside. My
newest knives have only a foam liner
and maybe a plastic sleeve in the box.

I have boxes that have an end label
applied over another end label which
was for another knife.

All this is probably irrevelant in the
scheme of things but it has been a
slow evening here while browsing the
knife forums and eBay.

Jerry

[jabba359]

I can understand the plastic protective
film placed on the sides of knives with
titanium side plates such as the Phoenix
but why does my Scorpius SS have the
covering on one side?

The gray Spyderco boxes are of better
quality than the Chinese red and black
boxes. Cheaper to manufacture like
most everything else. I have several
duplicate knives and one may be in the
red/black box and the other in the gray
box?? Change of box mfr's midstream?
What do the letters denote on the end
tag (LH/GH/DH) etc.?

My older Spydercos dating back to
those in simple white boxes had instructions,
warrantys etc. inside. Later boxes had
Knife Edge-U-Cation papers inside. My
newest knives have only a foam liner
and maybe a plastic sleeve in the box.

I have boxes that have an end label
applied over another end label which
was for another knife.

All this is probably irrevelant in the
scheme of things but it has been a
slow evening here while browsing the
knife forums and eBay.

Jerry

Letters denote production date by month and year, where:

A=1
B=2
C=3
etc...

So the dates you provided are: LH (L being the month, H the year) is Dec. 2008; GH is July 2008; DH is April 2008.

[fredswartz]

Thanks for the info. That clears things
up.

[The Deacon]

In addition to titanium models, the plastic film has been used on a number of all stainless models. The Cricket and Poliwog come to mind. Your Scorpious may have lost the film on one side over the years or, if that side is the clip side, may never have had any there.

I agree that the red/black boxes are not as robust as the older grey/black ones, or the older yet white/blue and white/black ones, but they're better than the cereal box cardboard flap end boxes Spyderco used until the late 90's. IMHO, packaging has never been one of Spyderco's strong points. Of course that's something more important to collectors like myself than to users and since Spytderco's goal is to provide reliable high performance tools it's not something for which one can really fault them.

Like many other things at Spyderco, the change to the red/black boxes was gradual and, at least to my observation, was done as economically as possible. I was heavy into Spyderco collecting at the time and it seemed to me that they discovered a stash of the older grey boxes at least once after the red/blacks started shipping. At least some new knives come with informational notes in the box and, in the event you haven't noticed, the warranty info now appears on the underside of the tray. Doubt we'll ever see a repeat of the mini catalogs that accompanied knives back in '98 and '99, just too many models for that nowadays.

I too have had boxes that were "recycled". Don't have a definite answer but assume it was done at the factory since at least a couple of the boxes involved bore date stamps only a month or two prior to my receiving them. You can either give them points for thinking "green", or take away points for being cheapskates.

For years I've had the feeling that a plaque with Emerson's "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" hangs somewhere in Spyderco's offices.

[jackknifeh]

The only thing I've seen in box difference is when I got a Jester from thespydercostore.com. There was no label on either end of the box. The knives were brand new and this site was the only one to have them. They showed up at the other sites a couple of days later. Got to hand it to The Spyderco Store for shipping a product before it even gets inventoried and labeled. Or maybe they don't label boxes at all. It doesn't matter to me. In fact I was unaware that the box was important. The first Spydercos I bought the box got tossed as soon as I felt like the knife was working fine and the need to ship it back for some reason wasn't a concern. Then later I found out how important the box is. Now I know we don't buy knives. We buy boxes and Spyderco, being so considerate include a knife for free.

Jack

Jack