You may have seen these ads. These are sold on TV via long infomercial type sales pitches, where various large sets of knives an swords are sold for 100 - 200. Having paid as much as 50 to 100 dollars a piece for quality knives I’m amazed at the number of knives you get for the money in these deals. The knives and swords look nicely finished (on TV) and use a variety of exotic woods. The selections tend toward miltary type knives, fantasy and historical swords, huge bowie style knives and other hunting knives. The large bowies and swords seems to average around 20 - 30 each and the smaller knives are only a few bucks each.
They don’t (seemingly) make any special claims for the ruggedness or cutting performance of the blades, and seem to focus mainly on how impressive the swords look and the sheer volume of knives you are getting.
Are these pure crap? How can they deliver these many swords and knives for the money? Anyone gotten one of these? What did you think?
You can chrome plate a turd, but in the end, it’s still only a piece of crap.
PS: Good steel for a sharp knife of any substantial size is going to make the final cost come out in between $100.[sup]00[/sup] and $200.[sup]00[/sup] dollars. Search for Puma brand knives on eBay and compare similar sized knives and their prices.
It’s odd. In reviewing the knives for sale on the website (which are the same ones on TV) they are much more expensive ( 4X-5X) than the same knives on TV. I suspect this website exists mainly to provide "proof "of what a good deal the sets are.
I hate to tell ya this, but as far as swords go you are not going to get anything worthwhile unless you pay a heckuva lot of money. As for regular knives, i would NOT reccomend anything from frost cutlery. As you suspected, they are pretty much crap. You are FAR better off buying from a reputable knife company. You may be shelling out quite a bit for just one knife, but i would chose quantity over quality any day. Try spiderco, benchmade, or any of a number of quality knifemakers for something worthwhile. They can produce this sheer volume because they are poorly made pieces of junk, there’s no way around it.
Crap, as others have said, but good to buy (the big set of mostly-folding knives on HSN comes out to a dollar or two per knife, IIRC) and take to the local flea market and sell for $5 each.
I worked for Shop At Home who sells a TON of those Frost knives. The single swords are usally pretty good, but if you buy and odd lot set, get ready for loose hilts, broken handles, dull blades, and maybe one or two decent knives/swords.
Frost has a long history in the knife biz. When I started collecting pocketknives, there were Parker-Frost knives. Some were English, and some were Japanese. Parker and Frost parted ways, and over the years, Frost has bought out some other knife works such as Hen & Rooster. These days, Frost knives I’ve seen are fairly low-priced and nicely put together. To my eye, most of their designs are a little tacky. It’s a matter of taste, and you might disagree. Frost uses a lot of multicolored laminated wood for the handle scales. I’m not fond of that look, but they sell a lot of them.
The kitchen sets on the website don’t look so hot, but generally, I wouldn’t call Frost’s line crap or junk. Most of it is well put together and sturdy, for a good price. They’re not Puma or Gerber, but they don’t pretend to be. If you’re like me, you don’t want to carry a $130 knife around in your pocket, anyway.
Modern swords, frankly, baffle me. Outside of bullfights and historical reenactments, swords are not something today’s gentlemen carry around. Generally, sword collectors are interested only in the antique ones. Collecting modern swords seems kinda like collecting modern buggy whips. Amusing, maybe, but pointless.