L to R: Kosen x Malkoff VME, Small Sebenza 31 in S45VN, and the Grand Seiko SBGA211 “Snowflake.”

In a recent Instagram post someone asked why your second Sebenza is always better than your first. I wanted to explain why that is the case. In thinking about this, I also want to re-examine the notion that the Sebenza serves as an important product in the market in terms of pricing. These two ideas are important. The first, the “Second Sebenza Phenomenon” is the result of people acquiring knowledge as they go deeper into an interest. The second, the “Sebenza Barrier” is an analysis of pricing and quality in the knife market.

The History of the Sebenza

Before we get there, it helps to fully describe the history of the Sebenza. To do so, let’s pretend you live under a rock. The Sebenza is a knife made by Chris Reeve Knives, a production knife company located in Idaho. It was founded by a South African immigrant, Chris Reeve. Chris did product design, machining, and eventually supervision of the production process while his wife Anne oversaw the business side of Chris Reeve Knives. When they divorced in 2014, Anne stayed in place and Chris’s son Tim took over his father’s role in the business. In 2015 after years of dominating the Blade Show Awards for production quality, Chris Reeve was inducted in th Blade Hall of Fame.

An original, handmade version of the Sebenza was made by Chris Reeve himself while living in South Africa in 1987. A semi-production model, called the “Original” was released in 1991. There have been iterations ever since. The Sebenza is best known for two things: the framelock design and the steel. The framelock was invented by Chris Reeve and first showcased on the Sebenza. It was a modification of the linerlock developed by Michael Walker. It got rid of the scales over the liners and beefed up the liners until they made comfortable handles. The result was a knife with fewer parts and a thicker lock bar. The Sebenza was also the first production knife to sport a powder steel developed for cutlery. Chris Reeve was consulted in the design of S30V and the Sebenza was the first knife to use this steel. Originally the Sebenza had an ATS-34 blade. Then it was upgraded to BG-42. Finally, after Crucible made S30V, Chris moved over to powder steel blades. Since then it has been bladed in S35VN, S45VN, and Magnacut. High end versions have sported pattern-welded Damascus steel for decades now.

In addition to these innovations, the Sebenza’s calling card has been is amazing fit and finish. The blade’s deployment, while never snappy, is always smooth. Lock up is dead solid, providing what many collectors fondly call the “Bank Vault” feel. The Sebenza is also easy to service and clean. In fact, unlike most production companies, Chris Reeve Knives includes a hex wrench to disassemble your knife. Doing so is easy, repeatable, and problem-free. You can bury your Sebenza in sand, take it apart, clean it, and it will be as good as new. The knife also sports an excellent, “double dip” pocket clip made by Piranha Knives. There is now a sculpted clip available from Chris Reeve Knives. When Tim took over he remade all of the part holding and machining processes, essentially revamping every aspect of production.

The knife is currently on its “31” edition. I have owned a 25 and a 31. Both were “Plain Jane” versions (no inlays or damascus steel). There are two sizes: Small and Large. There are also three blade shapes: the clip point, the Insingo (designed in collaboration with Knife Art), and a tanto. My 25 and 31 were both Smalls with clip point blades. The 25 sported S35VN steel and the 31 has S45VN. Both cost $330 at the time of purchase. The 31 shortly thereafter went up to $425. As a step between the Plain Jane and the fancy versions, there are Sebenzas with a show side scale of carbon fiber.

The Second Sebenza Phenomenon

If you fall down the rabbit hole of pocket knives and you use the Internet you will eventually learn, via the wisdom of crowds, that you need a Sebenza. People, including me, gush over it all the time. And so, pushed by the adult equivalent of peer pressure, you will buy one. It will be nice and you will carry for a while and then you will realize it is pretty boring. There is no flipper, no mokuti, no bling of any kind. And so, still being buffeted by the currents of the IKC, you will want an even better, more exotic, more expensive knife. Eventually, as you work your way through the higher end part of the market you will realize you haven’t carried your Sebenza in a while and you will sell it, maybe to fund another knife purchase. After two or three years, the shininess of the Sebenza wears off and you realize that the really special stuff is found in the custom or small batch market. You will look back at the Sebenza as a stage, a stepping stone, into a wider world of high end knives. You might even look down on the knife as something boring and passe. Then, a few years later, you will realize that custom knives can be weird and not always perfect. You will think back about the Sebenza and realize, as if for the first time, that that knife was pretty darn good. It never had problems. It was never off center. It never had blade play. It never got gunked up in a way you couldn’t fix. It was always there, always working, always ready. Plus, well, you kind of don’t have a knife in that price bracket anymore, so why not? You circle around and you buy one again. And this time you realize that the Sebenza is truly a marvel. The knife you saw as plain and boring is intoxicating. Its so damn good. So what happened? How is this possible?

Learning.

In the same way that you learn things in school that, upon further reflection, turn out to be really useful (for me: the Business Judgment Rule from Corporations), so too it goes with hobbies and interests. When you are stepping up from the Delicas and Bugouts of the world to the Sebenza the faultless performance of the Sebenza is nice, but it doesn’t seem all that special. You’d expect a knife that expensive to never exhibit blade play, for example. But once you do a tour of even more expensive knives you realize that expectation is not always proven true. Some high end production knives have blade play. Some customs do too. And when you own your first Sebenza you are very unlikely to know that. But when you own your second, you know that for sure having been disappointed by kilobuck knives that wiggle a smidge when locked up. It is then and only then that you realize that the Sebenza NEVER has these problems and yet costs half or a third or a tenth what the fancy custom does.

It comes down to this—in the first instance you buy a Sebenza because others tell you you need it, while in the second instance you buy a Sebenza because you want it. You now understand what makes it great, so you want to experience that greatness first hand. Put another way—when you bought your first Sebenza you didn’t know enough to know why it was great. By the time you come around again, you have these insights and you an appreciate the details in a way you couldn’t before. This is why your second Sebenza is always better than your first.

The Sebenza Barrier

For a long time if someone wanted a “nice” knife the choice was not terribly complicated—Sebenza. Sure there were customs and the occasional Rockstead, but for the most part high end knives started and ended with the Sebenza. Now the Sebenza is one of dozens if not hundreds of options. And the Sebenza is significantly more money than it used to be. So does it still serve as a demarcation point between sane and not sane purchases? I think so.

Benchmade makes a bunch of very nice knives. All of them are made here in the US. They have stuff that’s just over $150 and stuff that costs around $500. They are the standard bearer in many ways for enthusiast grade EDC knives. They also sell a bunch to people that use their knives at work. But if you look at complaints online about Benchmade knives that are too expensive for what you get (Narrows, I am looking at you), invariably they are knives that are more expensive than the Plain Jane Sebenza. This holds true for Spyderco, ZT, CRKT, pretty much every company. Some companies, like Shirogorov or Rockstead don’t have this issue because all of their knives are more than a Sebenza. But they are seen differently compared to the Spydercos of the world. Those are high end brands, luxury items that only a small handful of people that are real knife enthusiasts know about. Ask, Family Fued style, 100 people about knife brands and 10 will say Buck and Gerber, 5 will say Benchmade, Spyderco, ZT, Kershaw, Cold Steel, and CRKT, and one or none will know Rockstead or Shirogorov. And this sorta proves the point.

But there is more. Despite the expansion of the market and a huge growth in the high end stuff beyond the Sebenza Barrier, the Sebenza is still the knife that people recommend as a first foray into high end folders. It is still great for all the reasons detailed about. It is still perennially faultless whereas some of the higher priced stuff is, surprisingly, hit or miss. The Spyderco Drunken, for example, is at or above the Sebenza Barrier and it is atrocious. The Narrows and Mini Narrows are good, but not blow you away better than they are $500. Even the Shiro Neon had an exposed rear tang. So, while the market is more crowded at and above the Sebenza Barrier, its not crowded with stuff that is simply better. After all, it is VERY hard to be just flat out better than a Sebenza, hence its fame.

There is one more point here—the Sebenza’s sustained greatness has earned it a place in the “Classic” tier of gear. Like a Filson Jac Shirt or a Rolex Submariner, the Sebenza is now they storied knife of Shill Sites and Hipsters everywhere. Huckberry offers the Sebenza. Best Made did (or does) too. It has attainted a legendary status among high end gear. And it earns that reputation. So if you are looking for a knife to go with your can of mustache wax or your GB hatchet, its the Sebenza. The fact that it is American made AND has a great reputation among enthusiasts only adds to its hipster allure.

After all these years the Sebenza remains an important knife even as the market has gotten more crowded. And if you haven’t bought your Second Sebenza yet, now is a good time. Magnacut models are available. If you are looking for what I consider to be the very best Sebenza, I would suggest you wait for the Knife Art Small Sebenza 31 Insingo with Carbon Fiber Handles. If you want the best “fancy” Sebenza that is readily available, I would go with a Box Elder Burl inlay.