84mm Watch Case opener Question

[jaydar]

Picked up a Longines Watch case opener today with a Soldier that I needed for my collection , I was going to sell it on to pay for the increasingly expensive soldiers 

But on reflection its far to nice for that , its hard to tell from the photos but colour of the alox is just about perfect







So the question is how many versions of this knife are there for my new collection ?

In order to hopefully keep things realistic I am going to ignore advertising knives in the same format for watch companies that have the small blade  (for now )

[HankSolon]

Whatever they might say to you:
For me it's a knife worth to be dissassembled! 
Is the mainblade a 2.0 or 2.4mm one?

[jaydar]

Well the case opener is 26mm from scale to tip or if you mean the width of the main blade it is 2mm at the pivot.

But it is staying in one piece

[HankSolon]

Right, I meant the width at the pivot point. 2.4 mm would have been interesting.

[Marius]

That's a very nice looking SAK and so I would keep it in one piece as-is.

 

[jazzbass]

Here's what I know: There are two main styles of watch case openers - those in the 84mm "student knife" frame (Pocket Pal, Secretary, etc) and those in the 84mm "Officer's Knife" frame (Bantam, Cadet, etc).

Student Frame
In the 84mm student knife frame there are variants in the scale type, the design of the watch opener tool, and the tang stamps. In scale material, the vast majority are made in smooth alox that look like a Secretary (like the one shown in this thread). There are also variants with cellidor scales like a Pocket Pal and checkered alox like a Popular. The Secretary and Popular styles are always some sort of advertising knife, typically for a watch company (Breitling, Omega, Rolex, etc). I imagine that one aspect of collecting these would be to get different versions based on the companies that are being advertised, much like the way many people collect different types of Classics.

For the design of the watch opener tool, again most look like the one shown in this thread, but a few show up with a notch in the opener part (see attached). Not sure if this is a mod someone made to the tool or not, but it does show up on several knives from many different sellers.

Finally, for there are many tang stamps found for this variant -- the main ones I've seen are (f/r):

VxSS/Victoria
Elinox/VxSSR
VxSSR/-

Officer's Knife frame
It appears that sometime in the late 1990s Victorinox stopped making the student frame type watch case opener and switched to a 84mm Officer's Knife type - basically a Bantam with watch case opener blade. Approx 40% of the time this type has regular eco scales without ads, and 60% of the time they do have ads on them (either screen printed on the eco scales or inlaid on regular cellidor scales).

[jaydar]

Here's what I know: There are two main styles of watch case openers - those in the 84mm "student knife" frame (Pocket Pal, Secretary, etc) and those in the 84mm "Officer's Knife" frame (Bantam, Cadet, etc).

Student Frame
In the 84mm student knife frame there are variants in the scale type, the design of the watch opener tool, and the tang stamps. In scale material, the vast majority are made in smooth alox that look like a Secretary (like the one shown in this thread). There are also variants with cellidor scales like a Pocket Pal and checkered alox like a Popular. The Secretary and Popular styles are always some sort of advertising knife, typically for a watch company (Breitling, Omega, Rolex, etc). I imagine that one aspect of collecting these would be to get different versions based on the companies that are being advertised, much like the way many people collect different types of Classics.

For the design of the watch opener tool, again most look like the one shown in this thread, but a few show up with a notch in the opener part (see attached). Not sure if this is a mod someone made to the tool or not, but it does show up on several knives from many different sellers.

Finally, for there are many tang stamps found for this variant -- the main ones I've seen are (f/r):

VxSS/Victoria
Elinox/VxSSR
VxSSR/-

Officer's Knife frame
It appears that sometime in the late 1990s Victorinox stopped making the student frame type watch case opener and switched to a 84mm Officer's Knife type - basically a Bantam with watch case opener blade. Approx 40% of the time this type has regular eco scales without ads, and 60% of the time they do have ads on them (either screen printed on the eco scales or inlaid on regular cellidor scales).

Thank you for that excellent info

Loving your tang stamp coding ,hope this can become the standard