As most of you know, designer Blackie Collins passed away last summer. It was a terrible loss to the knife and tool community as Blackie's name showed up in patents in some of the unlikeliest places.
I had teh pleasure of meeting him a few years ago at a show in Orlando, and he was a really great guy. Some guys figure they have their name on a patent and that gives them the right to be better than everyone else, but Blackie was the kind of guy who was genuinely happy to meet people- even people like us that pick designs apart and complain about the bits that don't work!

Despite being on my way to another appointment I stopped and spent a bit of time talking to the man, and he was nice enough to autograph a small knife for me, and as soon as I got home, it went into a safe location with some of the other exceptionally special pieces in my collection. Since I had my photo gear out today, I decided to snap a couple of shots of the knife, and since they aren't all horribly bad, I thought I'd share them here if you folks don't mind!



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