Hardest knives to find? (By blacksmith)

[KevinWood44]

Which blacksmith's knives are the hardest to find?? It seems like Yu Kurosaki is among the most popular and I have had a hard time finding his knives available.

Anyway it just got me thinking....who else is on this list??

[Inhuman]

Yu is still producing his stuff regularly. He’s young , and try his brother if you have a hard time finding Yu’s stuff.
But they are hardly rare or hard to find.

Some really hard to find smith’s include Ashi Honyaki, Tatsuo Ikeda, kato, etc

[Kalaeb]

Is the implied assumption- harder to find=more popular=better?

[KevinWood44]

Is the implied assumption- harder to find=more popular=better?

Not at all. I checked about 5 different sites and Yu's knives were sold out or almost sold out on every one of them. It may have just been the sites I was looking on, but it seems like his knives are hard to keep in stock. Or maybe some of his lines, such as the Raijin, were limited and therefore sold out quickly. I couldn't say.

I wasn't implying anything, I was just curious which knife makers have the most sought after knives.

[cliff]

Kurosaki makes terrific knives. I love mine. They seem to sell through, but then they come back. If you keep checking back, you should be able to get one. It's not the same as Shig, Kato, et al.

[Tic tac fresh]

It’s also helps to put your email into the restock alert.

[mauichef]

Is the implied assumption- harder to find=more popular=better?

Not at all. I checked about 5 different sites and Yu's knives were sold out or almost sold out on every one of them. It may have just been the sites I was looking on, but it seems like his knives are hard to keep in stock. Or maybe some of his lines, such as the Raijin, were limited and therefore sold out quickly. I couldn't say.

I wasn't implying anything, I was just curious which knife makers have the most sought after knives.

I think the issue is with what is meant by "most sought after". We recently had a similar thread about the most rare. The consensus was "what is rare"

I doubt that Kurosaki's knives are more sought after than many, like Kato for instance, but he supplies many outlets and there is only so much a man can do in 24 hours! They are brilliant knives however and deserving of being sought after.

The Konosuke Kaiju is never available so is it sought after like Kurosaki. Few people can afford it or need it. So, no. Just that they make 2 a month!!!

Point being that there is no answer to this question without some kind of context or reason.

So Kalaeb was spot on with his assumption. "I was just curious which knife makers have the most sought after knives." is too open ended to elicit anything meaningful.

But I defer to other to prove me wrong

[salemj]

I think the best answer to your question is what you already know: it tends to be the knives that are frequently out of stock, which is much different than saying knives that are actually "hard to find" (i.e., only sold by a few retailers or only sold as customs without standard webpages). In some ways, I think you might mean "hard to get."

But Mauichef is spot-on, too: it is important not to confuse "hard to get" with popularity. Kurosaki is extremely productive, but he also has lots of lines. I think his knives restock frequently, but also sell-out frequently. They are not especially hard to get, but they can require a little diligence. Other knives restock very slowly and in small numbers. They can be much harder to get over any given period time (I've frequently wanted over a year for knives to re-stock), but easier to get if you are watching because they may not have a wait list and people aren't so much biting at the bit to buy them as they are made in small numbers and are not re-stocked until they sell out, so it can take a long time to restock. Then you have ones like the Konosuke Kaiju, which are made is small batches and have long waitlists so they can be impossible to get.

I am loathe to discuss this in terms of smiths. But I think that, when you spend time looking at sites, you begin to learn that some knives require you to be really, really diligent to get your hands on, and others much less so. What is odd is how many stellar knives are sitting around in-stock that no one seems to want, while so many other knives may sell out quickly because they are the talk of the town at the moment. This is where you need to be careful because it can mess with your head. I think of Kurosaki along these lines: I don't watch his stuff carefully, but I'd bet real money that it is quite easy to find many of his older lines, but extremely difficult to snag one of his newest offerings. So it is less about the smith or the quality than what is the newest, shiniest object in some cases, and that changes from quarter to quarter.

[mauichef]

Very well stated Joe!

[XexoX]

Very well stated Joe!

Well said Ray, on the well stated Joe. Joe, well said too.

[KevinWood44]

I think the best answer to your question is what you already know: it tends to be the knives that are frequently out of stock, which is much different than saying knives that are actually "hard to find" (i.e., only sold by a few retailers or only sold as customs without standard webpages). In some ways, I think you might mean "hard to get."

But Mauichef is spot-on, too: it is important not to confuse "hard to get" with popularity. Kurosaki is extremely productive, but he also has lots of lines. I think his knives restock frequently, but also sell-out frequently. They are not especially hard to get, but they can require a little diligence. Other knives restock very slowly and in small numbers. They can be much harder to get over any given period time (I've frequently wanted over a year for knives to re-stock), but easier to get if you are watching because they may not have a wait list and people aren't so much biting at the bit to buy them as they are made in small numbers and are not re-stocked until they sell out, so it can take a long time to restock. Then you have ones like the Konosuke Kaiju, which are made is small batches and have long waitlists so they can be impossible to get.

I am loathe to discuss this in terms of smiths. But I think that, when you spend time looking at sites, you begin to learn that some knives require you to be really, really diligent to get your hands on, and others much less so. What is odd is how many stellar knives are sitting around in-stock that no one seems to want, while so many other knives may sell out quickly because they are the talk of the town at the moment. This is where you need to be careful because it can mess with your head. I think of Kurosaki along these lines: I don't watch his stuff carefully, but I'd bet real money that it is quite easy to find many of his older lines, but extremely difficult to snag one of his newest offerings. So it is less about the smith or the quality than what is the newest, shiniest object in some cases, and that changes from quarter to quarter.

Very well put. Thanks

[Mike9]

The one I know for sure is Hiromoto. Master Nagao retired a while back with no apprentice so it's the end of his knowledge as well as the line. JCK is out, but I heard there are some AS's in China. I emailed the guy, but found a Hiromoto 240 AS with DM's performance package so I've had a 270 AS for years and bought a 240 Tenmi Jyuraku a few years ago and I think it was the last one Koki had.