Overview
This rare South African 7" Tanto features a black coated, tanto shaped blade. The blade is stamped #20. The knife also features a knurled handle, screw off butt cap, and a black leather sheath. Below is the response received from Mrs. Anne Reeve when more information was requested regarding this piece:"The knife you show is one of our range of One Piece Knives known as a 7" Tanto, also as a Tanto II (Roman numeral for two, not eleven). The number 20 is a serial number, indicating it is the 20th 7" Tanto that we made. In January 1987, I consolidated the ragged bits of paper that was our numbering record into a spreadsheet and at that time, we were at 81. This would indicate that #20 would have been made in the earlier part of 1986. We were still in South Africa at that time. We started marking country of origin in mid-1987 so this is why there is no marking on the other side of the knife. We immigrated to the USA in March 1989. The blade steel is D2 (we changed to using A2 in February 1987, the butt cap is D65S Aluminum. The sheath was made by our friend, John Leth - it was a short while later he changed to using black thread for the stitching.
This is quite a rare knives, given how many different One Piece knives we made - 133 were made while we were in South Africa and 89 in the USA for a total of only 222."
Knife is in great shape for being nearly 30 years old. No signs of use, only light handling marks and slight irregularity (in coating?) near the tip of the blade.
