Inside Demko's 20.5 BOGO: Two Knives for the Price of One and a Half
A buy-one-get-one offer on a $265 knife is not automatically a deal, but Demko's current promotion on the AD 20.5 comes close. Buy the blue 20CV model at $265 and an S35VN Shark Foot ships free, which puts the effective price near $132.50 per knife. One buyer used the offer as a test before spending four figures on an AD20, and the resulting thread did the maths the marketing page will not.
His report on the knives themselves was positive: both solid, both functioning perfectly, fit and finish clean. The open question he raised is the one nobody can settle from a photo, which is how Taiwanese production and heat treatment compare with Demko's American-made line. That is the real risk in a promotion like this. Geometry and lock design travel well between factories; heat treatment discipline does not always, and a 20CV blade at the wrong hardness behaves like a different steel.
The comments added the comparison that makes the offer legible. A full-size AD20 in G10 moves for around $350 on the secondary market with some regularity, and titanium versions sit around $500 to $550, so the $1,000 figure was never the entry price for the design. Used AD-20S models in Elmax have appeared near $300. Against those numbers, $265 for two 20.5s is a genuine discount rather than a manufactured one.
The resale arithmetic is the second half of the deal. Buyers in the thread pointed out that the unwanted half can be sold for $150 to $200, which brings the kept knife down near or below $100. That only works if both blade shapes appeal to somebody, so the offer is best for buyers who want one of the two shapes badly and can tolerate the other. It is worse for anyone buying purely because a promotion exists.
The verdict: worth it if you already wanted the Shark Foot or the 20.5, and worth it as a low-risk way to decide whether the Demko lock is for you before spending on an American build. The offer was still live and in stock at the time of the post and was described as running through the end of October. Check the current price and stock before ordering, and confirm which steel and blade shape each half of the pair ships with.