Bob and I were just discussing knives. He gave me another Global knife for Christmas. For years I've had Henckels and Wusthofs and whatever, but not until I got a Global did I have a knife that felt 'right' in my hand. In fact, it was holding a Global that made the others feel wrong. Now I have six of them.
Anyway, somehow the conversation got onto stuff like Kramer knives and I wondered out loud what price they got at auction last October for Anthony Bourdain's custom made Kramer. The answer was surprising:
That Kramer knife had a rich backstory, both in terms of lore (you can't make a blade out of stardust, inspired by Samurai warriors, and avoid it) and because of who owned it. Bourdain was a fiend for craftsmanship, and Kramer made what he called "the most awesome knife in the world." He even spent a day in Kramer's workshop filming a show on how punishingly difficult those knives were to make. In 2016, Kramer made Bourdain his own knife and charged him $5,000 for it—it wasn't exactly a steal at the time, but it was the only Kramer-made meteorite knife that was sold at a flat rate instead of being put up for auction. It went for more than 45 times that amount at this auction.
After the knife, Bourdain's U.S. Navy jacket, which was given to him to commemorate the evacuation of his No Reservations crew from Lebanon aboard the USS Nashville after war broke out there in 2006, took in the highest bid—$171,150. Other lots that drew in big bucks were a silver Michelin Man sculpture, a Ralph Steadman illustration called Rats in the Kitchen, a duck press (which is exactly what it sounds like), and a signed script that the cast of The Simpsons gave Bourdain after he appeared as himself in a 2011 episode.
Pretty cool. All the money raised went to Tony's wife, or was she an ex-wife by then, and daughter.