I'll tell you a story about Taylor. Some years ago at a trade show, Taylor had a booth exhibiting his knives. A friend of mine, who is a died in the wool S&W collector and had to have everything made that says "S&W" on it, made an arrangement for Taylor to send him a sample of every knife Taylor made that had the S&W name on it. Shortly thereafter, my friend began to get a box every week with about a 100 or so different knives in it, all marked Smith & Wesson. This went on for quite a long time, until my friend had several 1,000 S&W knives of all kinds. When he showed me the boxes of knives he had, I told him something was not right as only about a tenth, or less, of these knives were in the S&W catalogs. Then it was discovered that Taylor made up, in China, large batches of S&W knives every month and the S&W people would pick out what they wanted to sell, and the rest we passed over. These were the knives my friend was getting from Taylor. Now, the fun side of this, is that someday, these 1,000s of S&W marked knives will go on the auction block and really confuse future S&W knife collectors, as none of them can be tied to S&W. In fact, those that S&W did decide to select and sell are not always cataloged, and the S&W Licensing Dep't has changed management so often that no one knows what the prior licensing managers selected , or didn't select, and no records were apparently kept. Same applies to S&W belt buckles and other S&W accessories. If a S&W item appears in a S&W catalog, then you can assume it is a factory authorized item, however there are items that are factory authorized and never appeared in a catalog. Identification of those items is often next to impossible, as vendors and manufacturers make something with a S&W logo or name on it, hoping to get an order from the factory, or the factory allowed the vendor to ship the items to a user to see if there was a market for the item, such as the S&W Law Enforcement throw away .35mm cameras. About 3 or 4 yrs ago, at a Las Vegas SHOT SHOW, there was a laege display by S&W of accessories, includingknives, clothing, watches, sungless, shoes, boots, hats, poker chips, cosmetics, and you name it. There was a lady manager in charge of licensing then and she asked me if there wa anything that licensing could add to the selection as new management was emphasizing "Brand Acceptance". I suggsted that a new line of S&W Condoms might go over well. They could come in three colors - Blue, Nickel and Camo. The camo was so you could sneak up on your target! I think she is still laughing! Ed. # 35
