The Kershaw story began in 1974 when Pete Kershaw left Gerber Legendary Blades to form his own manufacturing company using his own designs. Starting off in Portland Oregon, Kershaw made pocket and outdoor use knives.

While the company is still based in Oregon, where most of the products are still made, they are now owned by the Japanese knife company KAI and some items come from their factories in Japan and China.

Ken Onion is Kershaw's best known knife designer and he has won numerous awards for his designs. Also designing for Kershaw is Launce Barber, and Frank Centofante, and others but this article concentrates on those knives designed by Ken Onion. Amongst his designs are the "Storm", "Rodeo Storm", "Blackout", "Whirlwind", "Avalanche", "Boa", "Speed Bump", "Spec Bump", "G10", "Chive", "Scallion", "Tanto Cyclone", "Vapor". "Leek", "Packrat", "Blur", "OsoSweet", and "Shallott", most of those available in different colors, and in plain edge, serrated and combo.

Ken hails from Wellington, Ohio, but it was his time spent on a farm in West Virginia that first inspired him to dabble in knives after he saw the work of a blacksmith who made knives. His work for Kershaw has provided the company with their best-selling and most popular designs.

There is also the Ken Onion Bump Limited Edition which features the "speed safe" opening system and a "flipper" which makes the opening even faster. The Bump has been designed for multi-tasking, minimum mass, but maximum performance. The blade, at four inches length, is flat ground for strength and consists of S30V stainless steel.

Ken also came up with a collaboration between Kershaw and Spyderco, the "SpyKer" knife, a pleasantly curved shape bearing a striking resemblance to a Kershaw but with the typical Spyderco round hole. Blade is CPMS30V steel, and hollow ground. Precision-machined G-10 handles are inlayed with silver carbon-fiber twill and assembled with an adjustable pivot pin and phosphor bronze bushings. There is a black steel pocket clip. Length is 47/8ths, with open length of 8 7/16^th inches.

So what makes a knife collectable? The name of the designer, in this case Ken Onion, its rarity, its beauty, the skill with which it is made. If it's a "Limited Edition"  knife where, say, only 1000 will ever be made, then most collectors will be looking for the lowest number possible, ideally "Number One of One Thousand" and those pieces in particular will maintain and usually raise their value over a number of years, not that most true collectors buy them in order to re-sell them. No, most will want to cherish them forever, which explains why comparatively few really collectible knives hit the resale market.