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BLACKJACK
 
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Our Price: $475.00


Product Code: 1908
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Description
 
Very rare first run Blackjack mamba made in USA 1987. The blade measures 8" by 1/4" thick with a satin finish. The handle is black Kraton with stainless steel tubes and glue. OAL: 15". The knife has never been used and is in excellent condition no sheath. Some Info I Found Re the Mamba:

The Mamba is the design that really is responsible for launching the entire BlackJack company. The model dates back to the 1970's when the first versions were made and sold from a gun and knife shop that was owned by former BlackJack CEO Mike Stewart. Most of those early knives were made by Mr. Stewart himself. The

first example was made by Mike Stewart and a would be knife maker by the name of Thomas Vincent Miller. At the time Mr. Miller was interested in becoming a knife maker but for some unknown reason seems to have lost interest shortly his involvement with the first Mamba knife. According to information I have recently been sent by a fellow collector, there were approx. 3,000 - 4,000, of the full size Mamba's made, beginning in 1987, and ending in 1993. There were approx. 50 of these done with a moly blade coating. I now believe that the green and black examples below, are moly coated not titanium coated, as I have previously stated. Recently former BlackJack CEO Mike Stewart responded to a question about the full size variant of the Mamba on in the BlackJack forum. Mike had this to say.

"CS-51 was a modified 5160. It had moly added for a bit more toughness. All of the vintage Mambas were all U.S. made , except for one batch of 300. That batch was made by Harumi Suzuki from AUS-8. We finished the blades in our Van Nuys shop and put on the handles. You can tell these from all the others. The blades were about .200' thick and were marked Japan. There were a number of runs of the Mamba.
The first run the Kraton handles were pinned on and glued down. The pins were actually hollow s.s. tubing that was flared. The next run had s.s. screw sets that held the handles in place. The balance of the runs have harder kraton handles that were held on with two large black Allen screws and a brass threaded tube. These Allen sets are what we are going to use on the E.O. The first run was built in our Chatsworth , Ca. shop. 1987. The second run was built in our Canoga Park shop in 1988. The third run was built in our Van Nuys, Ca. shop in 1989. The next two runs were also Van Nuys, Ca. shop in 1990 & 91. The final run was in the Effingham Il. shop in 1993. I think that the total production did not exceed 2500 units. In retrospect, That is not very many units and may explain why we don't see many on the secondary market.

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