The Discontinued Knives People Would Pay For Again Tomorrow
Every hobby has a graveyard of good ideas, and knife collectors know theirs by model number. A thread asking which discontinued knife people would want brought back started with the Demko AD-15, whose original poster had already scoured the market and concluded that his only realistic route was milling titanium parts for a production Cold Steel version.
The replies stayed on theme. The Cold Steel 3V and titanium AD10 came up immediately, with one owner saying it is one of his all-time favourites and that he would pay for a plain stonewashed version rather than the blacked-out one he owns. That is the pattern with discontinued knives: the demand is rarely for a straight reissue, it is for the configuration that was never made in enough numbers.
Lower down the price range, the Civivi Crit was nominated with a specific argument. It was described as a perfect EDC because it is a real knife with just enough multitool function that neither you nor the person you lend it to will be tempted to pry with the blade. The suggestion to add tweezers, in the style of the Sendy, is the kind of detail that explains why certain budget models build a following and then vanish.
The mechanics of discontinuation are what make these threads frustrating. Production runs end for unglamorous reasons: a steel becomes unavailable, a factory changes hands, margin on a model is too thin, or a designer's licence expires. Once a run ends, the remaining stock is either absorbed by people who already wanted one or held by flippers, and prices detach from the original design's value. Buyers then pay custom money for a production knife, which is exactly the situation the AD-15 poster described.
The verdict for anyone hunting a discontinued model is to decide early whether you want the knife or the idea of it. If you want the specific configuration, set an alert and be patient, because they do surface. If you want the function, there is almost always a current production knife that does the same job with a better steel. The AD10 in 3V has no direct replacement, which is why it appeared twice in one thread; the Civivi Crit does, which is why its absence is an annoyance rather than a tragedy.