My Top Three Spyderco Blades: r/knives Ranks the Golden-Era Lineup
Ask any knife community to rank its favorite brand and you'll get a debate. Ask r/knives for its top three Spyderco blades and you get a full-scale referendum on the most beloved catalog in the hobby — which is exactly what happened this weekend when one poster put their own top three out there and invited the community to match it.
Spyderco's lineup is uniquely suited to this kind of thread because it has depth at every level. The Para Military 2 is the perennial favorite — the compression-lock G-10 folder that has become the default answer for "best production EDC" — while the Delica 4 represents the brand's lightweight, FRN-handled everyday class, and the Manix 2 brings the ball-bearing lock and the beefier, hard-use personality. Around those three giants orbits a supporting cast that includes the Endura, the Native, the Sage, the Shaman, and the brand's vast collector's-club exclusives.
The ranking threads reveal how personal knife preferences actually are. Some commenters rank by steel, favoring the sprints and exclusives in M4, K390, and MagnaCut; others rank by ergonomics, defending the models that disappear into the hand; still others rank by history, honoring the designs that built the brand. The one thing the thread agreed on: Spyderco's hole-in-blade opening, its compression lock, and its willingness to experiment with steels put it in a category of its own.
Compared to ranking threads for other brands, the Spyderco version is always the most contested, because the brand's catalog is the deepest and its fans the most opinionated. The thread is also genuinely useful: for anyone looking to buy their first Spyderco, the repeated mentions of the PM2, Delica, and Manix — and the reasons behind each pick — are as good a buyer's guide as anything published.
The Verdict: The top-three Spyderco thread on r/knives is the community's own buyer's guide — a ranking debate that shows why the PM2, Delica, and Manix keep defining the brand, and why the arguments over them never get old.