Maybe he knows something I don't.
He should know the Randell knife company is maintaining the Randell collector market, and maintaining collector value, by rationing them out one at a time to big dealers who sell them at inflated prices to collectors.
Kinda like Beanie Baby's were at one time!
Buy filling dealer orders first, so they can sell them on Ebay at twice the going rate.
And making one time buyers wait for months or years in line behind the big dealer orders.
IMO: At one time Bo Randell did a major service to US GI's in WWII, by providing them with some of the very best handmade fighting knives available at the time.
As fast as he could make them one at a time in his orange grove shop.
But Bo Randell died in 1989.
Since then, Randell knife collecting has turned into a sub-species of other collecting fields that the manufacture intends to keep exclusive and collectible.
They are no longer handmade by one man.
They are handmade in a factory by quite a few semi-skilled & trained workers.
If the Randell knife company wanted to keep up with demand, and supply the demand?
They would expand and train more semi-skilled workers to meet the demand.
But if they did that?
It would surely PO a whole lot of Randall knife collectors that paid too much, & PO the internet dealers even worse that are making a fortune, now wouldn't it!
Myself?
I have a Randell from the early 1970's to represent the Vietnam era in my knife collection.
It's good, but not great.
I have made better myself I think.
But mine just don't have the mystique, or ora about them, that comes with the Randell name.
And the unobtainable to common man semi-custom knife they sell.
rc