10th Mountain Division mountain pocketknife

[PandoWeasel]

Hello,

 

This is my first post to this forum, although I have been looking around at the awesome pictures of the collections.

 

I have not actively collected for many years, and have recently been going through some of my collection and deciding where I want to go with it next.

 

I wanted to share these pictures of a 10th Mountain Division mountain knife that I found in an antique shop in Leadville, CO as a kid about 20 years ago. I paid under ten dollars for it and was thrilled, because I certainly could not afford any of the examples at the shows back then .

 

The knife has some condition issues, and it looks like it may have belonged to a kid after the war. There are only two blades remaining, the long knife blade and the "pick tool" (I forget what it is called), and the can opener tool is partially broken and in there, but I have never tried to open it. The smaller of the two knife blades is half present. The remaining blades are rusty and have many nicks along the edges of the blades. There are probably some other condition issues I have overlooked, but the list is so long!

 

When I collected 10th Mountain stuff years ago, this was considered a very rare example, and none of the local collectors had ever encountered an actual example. I think this knife is the Type 1 with the phillips head screwdriver mounted on the "stirrup" attachment and separate from the body of the knife.

 

That was before the internet though, and it is possible that many more examples of this knife are known by the collecting community. If not, then enjoy these pictures of what used to be considered a pretty rare knife. If it is still considered rare, then I would be interested in some of the collectors informing me of the relative rarity on the market.

 

I have not gotten anywhere with Google!

 

Thanks for taking a look!

[gunbarrel]

PandoWeasel,

 

Welcome to the Forum. You have a Type 3 there--congrats! :thumbsup:

[PandoWeasel]

Thank you for the clarification! I was a little bit off in my recollections.

 

I guess it is not as rare as it once was considered to be, but I still like it- The nice mountain knives were around $200 when I was a kid, and I had to look at them in the cases.

 

This one is ugly, but it was the right price!