I know I haven't posted in a long time, but need advice/help.
We were cleaning up one of our storage areas last week and found a quantity of Camillus M3 Blade Marked Repros that I bought in early 1990 from a Camillus Rep. while stationed at Camp Pendleton, CA.
History: I was just getting started in making reproductions of various WWI and WWII scabbards at the time. I had made contact with one of the Camillus Salesmen who serviced the Base PX and he helped set up an account so I could purchase the Camillus Marine Utility knives at the time to go with my Kabar scabbards. He also informed me that they were going to make a limited run of the blade marked M3 knives, 2,200 I believe, and would keep me posted if interested. I told him I would have to scrape up some cash, but was definitely interested. I ended up purchasing about 200. The factory finish was rough for my intended purposes, so I stripped the handles, bead blasted the metal, parkerized, and refinished the leather grips on about 125 of the original 200.
What I later found out was apparently, either the original factory black phosphate finish wasn't cured properly, or the leather they used for the grip was chrome tanned leather and it reacted badly where the leather met the pommel and guard causing surface rust over time. I had noticed early on, after a year or two, rust began to appear at the guards and pommels. All of the remaining knives that were forgot about over time has some minor surface rust in the aforementioned areas.
Question: Since Camillus ceased to exist in 2007, and even though these are reproduction knives and have apparently now become a collectible knife in their own right, should I sell them as is, or refinish them? Would refinishing the knives possibly hurt their value?
Also, a year or two after I made the purchase of what I was told was going to be a limited run of the M3 knives, Camillus began running M3 guard marked knives. I seem to remember they made over 4,000 of these as well.
Even though these are reproductions, I would be interested in any thoughts of the Collectors/Members of the Knife and Bayonet Board.
I apologize for the long post, but do value your input/suggestions.
Regards,
Richard