Reported by Mischa Palmers
Fire and smoke were the first signs of this years meeting AKI. Fortunately, the bushfires went down, so the knife makers and collectors finally arrived safe and sound. Once more, this year’s AKI was a big success.
During the morning, everybody marvelled at the knives in humorous and good mood, and the collectors took the chance to place their name cards in a box behind the knives they favored. Just before 01.00 pm, bustling increased as there were only a few minutes left to go into the drawing. Finally the boxes behind the knives were opened in order to find out about the “winners”.
Quite a remarkable group of collectors gathered around the table of Michael Walker to be part of the life drawing of the slip, which allowed a fortunate collector to buy his knife at $ 7,000. This could be said to be a bargain, thinking of the second knife. Handled as “hidden bid”, this knife was sold at unbelievable $ 52,250.
After the official part the collectors had some time to show off and discuss their knives. Some knives bought at the auction changed ownership again at this time. Late afternoon the hall cleared and people retreated into a few hours of privacy, before they met again for the collective dinner.
