My Coolest knife would be my Gerber BMF.
That is a really cool knife. I'm a sucker for sawback blades like these, it's a shame that they've sort of gone out of style. I would buy one if they were still made, same goes for the Buckmaster 184.
This is a BIG shout out for ABSALOM and WOOD714. These fine members realize the importance of the history of a knife. Both have left their knives untouched and un-cleaned. The dirt and grime tell their items unique history. I am a knife, gun, and tool collector. I have in excess of 500 antique knives. I made a good part of my living, taking something old and not working and making it new. So, when I started collecting old knives, I did the same. To date I have ruined nearly 500 old knives. Lessons learned too late in life. I cleaned up my late father in laws little folder. And this is when I stopped. I removed all his history and adventures from that knife. Many of the adventures I was with him at the time. I would give anything to have left it alone. But it was dirty and had pocket lint and a broken blade, so I "fixed" it. Now it is just a shiny object sitting on a shelf and the casual observer gets no hint of the miles traveled and or the reason it had the tip one blade broken off. But most importantly they get no sense of the great man that carried it.
I must partially disagree here. While I can see leaving a well worn knife alone, especially if it's a family heirloom, leaving dirt, grime, and especially rust on a blade seems almost disrespectful to me. It's like, I just can't see one of my ancestors approving of me essentially neglecting a knife out of some sort of sentiment placed upon it being dirty/corroded, but then again, my Grandfather was the sort of man who kept all of his tools spotless, ergo if anything he would be angry to see me neglecting one of his tools by allowing it to remain dirty/corroded just because it became that way once he took ill and was no longer able to clean it himself.
I also cannot help but feel like if the original owner left their knife dirty and allowed it to corrode, then that implies that it meant nothing to them, that it was a disposable commodity that they couldn't be bothered to wipe down after use, and thus any sentiment attached to the blade by a future owner is misplaced.
Scratches, notches, chips... Those are all signs of hard use which certainly do allude to romantic stories of the untold adventures it was carried/used during.
Dirt, grime, and rust... Those just strike me as signs of neglect by someone who really didn't care about maintaining the blade because they could just buy another.
But that's just me, based largely upon my own personal experiences, with my own Grandfather in mind, who wasn't the sort to leave his tools dirty, and would likely scold me if he had left me any tools which I left dirty just because they became that way in his absence.
If you fancy something as a treasured family heirloom which you intend to pass down through generations, then it's detrimental towards that goal to allow it to stay dirty and/or continue to corrode, not to mention that it sets a poor example for future generations when it comes to taking care of their things if you sort of romanticize the fact that an ancestor never cleaned nor cared for their things, then indirectly encourage them to do the same.
