mapper65
Member
My brother in law who's only had his 705 for several months hasn't been so lucky with old coins yet but he's already found a nice civil war belt plate and last evening my sister sent me two pictures to see if I could ID this for them.
In the original pictures that she sent me the words were kind of blurry so I asked her to send me some high res pictures which I've scaled down to post here, the text is a little more legible. The words of the front of the knife read "OUR LAMENTED PRESIDENT" and it has a bust of Abraham Lincoln on it. The back reads "AMERICAN KNIFE". Based on Lincoln being assassinated April 14, 1865 that would probably date this within a year or three from 1865. I doubt back then that they would have waited too much longer to produce something like this unlike nowadays with computer design and inexpensive materials they will try anything to make a buck on anyone at anytime.
I think this is a great find for him. I've only been ale to find one knife forum that has a similar knife on it except that the wording on the back is different than what's on this one. Looks like another detectorist had already started a post on a similar knife back in 2008. I've posted these pictures and some comments over there also. From what they are saying, this was probably produced before the history in most knife record books and that's why there is little known about these.
Lincoln Knife
In the original pictures that she sent me the words were kind of blurry so I asked her to send me some high res pictures which I've scaled down to post here, the text is a little more legible. The words of the front of the knife read "OUR LAMENTED PRESIDENT" and it has a bust of Abraham Lincoln on it. The back reads "AMERICAN KNIFE". Based on Lincoln being assassinated April 14, 1865 that would probably date this within a year or three from 1865. I doubt back then that they would have waited too much longer to produce something like this unlike nowadays with computer design and inexpensive materials they will try anything to make a buck on anyone at anytime.
I think this is a great find for him. I've only been ale to find one knife forum that has a similar knife on it except that the wording on the back is different than what's on this one. Looks like another detectorist had already started a post on a similar knife back in 2008. I've posted these pictures and some comments over there also. From what they are saying, this was probably produced before the history in most knife record books and that's why there is little known about these.
Lincoln Knife