We just added custom work number 6000 a week or so ago.  We consider custom work to be anything added to a Case knife that is not usually there, like a serial number, or something on the blade or handle, etc.

So what, you say?  Well custom work is important to the specialty knife collector.   Here are some examples:  On the knife update screen notice the Custom tab in the black bar.  Clicking it shows the areas of Custom work ranging from Accessories, to  Worked Backsprings.  For our first example click on SECOND SHIELD (in Features) and type trooper in the TEXT field.  Two second shields show up with the word trooper–one from Tennessee and one from North Carolina.   Notice on each record it shows a knife count and says “Show Knifes”.  Here are a couple from North Carolina.   Notice that they both have the same second shield.  Now, if your Dad was a Highway Patrolman or you lived in North Carolina  you now know that there would be at least 11 knives to get together for this collection.

Like knives with serial numbers?   Try the serial number drop down on custom work.  There are many different types of serial numbers, but this discussion will focus on the long tail C style.   Looking down you can see that over 780 knives have a long tail C serial number above the tang, another 917 have currently been identified with a long tail C number on the right front bolster.  Now look at the record for serial number 239.  Notice it says that there are 13 knives with long tail serial numbers like this.  What is the difference.  When the Case factory first adopted the long tail C serial number style it had not been approved as a registered trademark.   So the little R in a circle is missing from these serial numbers.  They can be found in 1986 knives and 1987, but there are also 1987 knives with the Registered mark.  I have currently documented only 13 of these, but I believe there may be a couple more that I have not come across.    Let’s talk about this.   These are all very rare knives: only 13 so far without the Registered mark, and almost 2,000 with it.    As all collectors know, these unusual kinds of happenings tend to create more value over time.  And as all Case Collectors know, the place for valuable knife information is KnifeDB.Com.

Shown are two of the thirteen knives without a Registered mark.  Then  the long tail engraving without the Registered mark.  Finally there is a right front bolster engraving with the Registered mark.  917 knives like this have currently been documented.