Ever Been To The Cold Steel Parking Lot Sale?

The title says it all. With Bladeforums.com down, I figure this is the next best place to ask.

For those of you who don't know, Cold Steel makes knives and other assorted cutting tools and weapons. Some people don't like their knives, some people do like them, a lot of people seem to think they are overpriced. A lot of people don't seem to think too highly of Cold Steel's owner, Lynne C. Thompson. Once a year in May he has a parking lot sale.

I live in LA, so it's a bit of a drive for me to go up to Ventura. Not looking for anything in particular. Don't really need any more cutting tools, but if I see a knife, sword, polearm, or whatever going cheap I'll buy it - they always make good gifts for my friends if I don't care to add it to my permanent collection.

Has anyone actually gone to this sale in the past? Any good bargain to be had?

Bruise

I'm thinking about going (for the first time) too. Maybe pick up a katana, hopefully for cheap - you know, in case of large groups of zombies...

Nope, Never been to one of their sales...

But I have been to similar things by other companies and have pretty much always been very disappointed in finding any real bargains. Have no idea if it would be the same with Cold Steel's parking lot sale, but past experience would indicate that it would be a gamble.

I've owned several Cold Steel knives and other edged tools. Always felt that they were a decent product for the money and decent designs.

Only actual defect I ever had in one of their knives was in the first "Magnum Tanto" I had (billet, not San Mai steel, one of the first ones they sold.). It broke the first time I used it for cutting anything tougher than string. When I returned it, they did a magnaflux exam, followed by an actual electron microscope examination of it and determined it was most likely a microscopic crack in the original billet of steel from the foundry, and they replaced it with no problems... And I have had that replacement for at least 20 years with no complaints, although I'll admit that it is in one of my emergency kits and has only seen hard use a couple of times... It is not EDCed. Plus they threw in several of their cheaper knives as a 'bonus for my patience'.

Yeah, there are better designs and better quality, but it seems that for a 20% increase in quality, you double the price of a knife.

Silviron said:

Nope, Never been to one of their sales...

But I have been to similar things by other companies and have pretty much always been very disappointed in finding any real bargains. Have no idea if it would be the same with Cold Steel's parking lot sale, but past experience would indicate that it would be a gamble.

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I know what you mean, and I would tend to agree. But, I've heard secondhand that this sale is usually very crowded. Since Cold Steel has been having this sale for years, I would assume that if the prices sucked there would be just a few people showing up, not large crowds.

Glad to hear someone had a good experience with Cold Steel. It's hard to believe a Magnum Tanto broke so easily. It looks like a big, beefy knife that could take a lot of abuse. Sounds like you got great customer service, though.

CS does seem to have that "luv 'em or hate 'em" standing among knife knuts.

That being said, if there's one model that I've CONSISTENTLY heard or read about thru the years that gives excellent performance and rep as a field knife, it's the Recon Scout model. Personally, I'd try to score one of these if I was there.