Recent Articles

I am not going to dive too deep into this bag, because while it is very interesting — it’s not something readily available for purchase as a new item. You can easily find them secondhand, but you are buying secondhand then. And, also, it’s not my favorite bag, it’s mostly just ok, so I don’t think it is worth a ton of time on it.

But, it is one of those bags I had been wanting to try for a while, so I snagged one at a solid deal — this is the Mystery Ranch Street Fighter — and why not help calm your wonder too.

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Fun fact, I have in my possession one of these knives, but I own two — and I never sold or given away any. How? Well my Bexar Ultem was lost by UPS in their Drop Box so I am fully out on that, thanks a lot UPS. Even though I had that model Bexar for only a few days, I was so impressed with it, that I went right back and got the Titanium model — which we will talk about today.

But spoiler: this is possibly the best knife on the market today — without caveat. I know, I know, let’s talk about how that’s even possible.

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I snagged the Seatrek for a bargain basement $140 from Jack Mason, but I am going to be looking at it in the perspective of the MSRP listed — but know that Jack Mason does sales often during the year (and they seem to be replacing this model, however it’s still worth a quick look).

The Seatrek is a quartz diver, with a lot of subtle flair to it, and it looked like a steal at the discounted price (spoiler: it was/is).

Short review: really great design elements, well finished, good specs, priced correctly at around $200.

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It doesn’t really matter how expensive some of your knives are, or how well settled you are on them, there’s a certain amount of comfort and charm that comes from dropping a Swiss Army Knife in your pocket. What it is about the relatively inexpensive knives, and the overall lackluster materials, I don’t know other than to know that they are great knives.

Still, haven’t you had the thought “man, what if Victorinox actually tried to make the SAK better?” I’ve had that thought and so did MKM. Enter the Malga 6, which looks a lot like a Swiss Army knife, but uses higher-end materials. M390, and Micarta to name a few.

I’ve had this knife for a while now, and I drug my feet writing about it because of the mixed feelings I have about the knife. Actually, I don’t, because I simply don’t like it.

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I picked this watch up to meet my requirements as a watch which you can get for under $600, and wear anywhere. And my requirements for wearing anywhere is that it would be a watch I could wear swimming at a resort, traipsing through the woods, or in a Board Room. There’s not many watches which can pull that kind of duty, but of those limited few — Seiko’s Alpinist family is certainly in the mix.

This 1959 re-imagination, the SBDC149, is the revival and modernization of a 1959 mountain climbing watch. And it adds a lot of new stuff: date window, better lume, 70hr power reserve, 200m water resistance — just to name a few things.

This is a stellar watch, and in this emerald green dial, it really pops. It also comes in blue, ivory, and a slate gray color — all of them looking spectacular. I had no other green dials, so that’s the model I choose, and it might represent the best watch you can spend just under $600 on.

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Orbit Gear makes some wild designs on bags, some subdued ones, and all around well made offerings. When I saw the C102 Sharpshooter, it looked like a stellar bag and at $128 (+$30 shipping) it was worth picking up to try out.

It’s a very good bag, but not perfect.

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Maybe you noticed, but I’ve been on a slipjoint kick lately — they are very subdued feeling to those around you when you are going into places like offices. Anyways, carrying on with my quest to find great slipjoints, I snagged an Ace Farley Slipjoint with green canvas micarta second hand. I’m impressed, this is a very good slipjoint knife — it’s also a very good knife in general.

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So you want throw, but not too much throw and you still want to slip it in your pocket? That’s the KR1 and the D1 from Emisar and Noctigon. Here, I grabbed the new D1 with the SFT-40 for a balanced beam shape.

It’s… fine…

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Boldr made a wave in the ’micro brands’ pool when it launched the Venture lineup of watches. A small, titanium cased, field watch with dive watch levels of water resistance — all for a very attractive price — a hard proposition to ignore for any fan of watches. I snagged a Boldr Venture Sandstorm to give a try and see what the watch and brand are all about.

It’s a very compelling watch, but quirky at the same time.

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They call this the “DressKX”, which is admittedly a better name than Seiko gave it, which in this case we have the SRPE61 (there’s so many variants with little rhyme or reason to the labeling).

Before we get going, what you should know, is that there’s no better watch I know of for under $300. Flat out, this is the best sub-$300 being made today. It’s also possibly the best at higher price points too. But it gets so much better than that, because while the MSRP is $275, you can get many of these for right at/around the $200 mark.

I’m basically saving you money already. Just buy it, but I can write more reasons if you would like…

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Discord pal(s) have been pushing me to check out a Karas pen for a while now, and I recently snagged the Karas Kustom INK V2 Rollerball in the tumbled silver finish. This is a beast of a pen, and a really solid offering with a few quirks.

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