If you are ever in NW AR come and visit us. I'm out and about in the store fairly often. If you call ahead of your visit we can let you know if I'll be in that day.

They are all from the same city of Solingen. It was the knife and sword making center of Germany for centuries. Kind of Like Sheffield for English, Seki City for Japan, and Maniago is for Italy.

Kissing Crane, Robert Claas cutlery was riding along barely making ends meet by producing contract knives and mediocre KC products...out sourcing to Spain and Italy was the last straw I guess...and I think 2018+ they finally went under....and thanks to so called Knife entrepreneurs like Jim Frost, only interested in fast profit...this German brand now is made in China, so is most H&H now...thanks Jim!!😢

A shame but I have seen many minty old Hen & Roosters on eBay lately--just bought a congress with aqua corleon handles. The baby boomer collectors are cashing in (I believe) and there is opportunity to get "the real ones".

That's the K93 featherlite one-hand knife. I will be posting a video about the knife and its history as soon as we get the latest shipment of it in.

Hen & Rooster made some of, if not THE finest pocket knives, paralleled or surpassed only by the finest of a very few select handmade knife makers, until 1980 when I lost the company. I am not familiar enough with Great Eastern Cutlery to make comments on the quality of their knives.

Thank you for the reply, sir.

You bet Gabe! Take a look at this video here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mN9xaa9ksMrNoGQ.html

All the ones made before July, 1980, that I can think of, were indeed marked at a minimum "Germany" or "Solingen" or both.

The ones sold in the U.S. are made in Spain. Ones sold in Europe are still made in Germany. Frost owns the U.S. trademark. Klaas owns the German trademark. Stick to the German knives if you're collecting. Quality is top of the line.

One of his favorite knives of all time, the K93 Featherlite. We have the knives, but we are currently out of the kydex neck sheaths. agrussell.com/knife/A-G-Russell-FeatherLite-One-Hand-Knife-8A--K93-CT8A

"Their current quality is worth every penny that they charge for them... they are now 40, 50 dollar knives."

The quality of Russels’s Hen and Rooster knives was not the issue, they were excellent knives. The western world has changed so much, and among those changes are things that affect the pocketknife market. Most western men no longer carry a pocketknife. Younger men, in particular in more liberal and professional classes, were brought up to view a pocketknife not as a necessary every-day tool, but as a weapon. Consider our public schools that now expel or suspend a student found with a pocketknife, in some cases even for drawing a picture of a knife! Primarily it is tradesmen, rural people, or others viewed by the elites as “lower class” who still carry a pocketknife. Second, although carrying a pocketknife is much less prevalent, there has been a great growth in “knife collecting.” But this is not the same kind of collecting as in the past. Once someone who was a collector of any type of man-made object would seek out vintage examples, especially outstanding or premier products, of past craftsmen or artists. But the majority of modern knife collectors purchase new made products from mass manufacturers such as Case, or even have collections of Asian made knives bearing the brand names of past failed or bankrupted American, German, or English cutlers. The majority of these products look pretty but have nothing close to the quality found in those original products of Solingen, Sheffield, or Ellenville.