I have now heard from three different sources that the Phil Collins collection contains THE ORIGINAL BOWIE KNIFE. I find this to be completely impossible to authenticate for a variety of reasons. Would someone care to comment.

I have read that he has “A” Bowie knife but no way to prove it was Jim Bowie’s.

Article
https://www.expressnews.com/150years/lea...p#photo-7412574

Jim--

At the time the True West article and other stuff came out about Phil Collins donating his collection to the Alamo, there was some discussion here on the Forum about it: http://www.knifetalkforums.com/ubbthread...true#Post124760

I am Member Number 046 of the Antique Bowie Knife Association, so I asked some of the old hands about this at the time. I softened the words of those old hands in the summary that I posted at the above thread on the Forum!

Having had the pleasure of accepting the donation of the collection, I wonder if perhaps the curator at the Alamo then had the task of trying to authenticate all the items...and where that might have left them.

Fakery of the old knives has been going on for some time, the "original" Jim Bowie knife has been discovered repeatedly in the almost 200 years since the battle at the Alamo. All the false claims and the outright fakery is meant to separate somebody from their money!

For example, I recently saw an old knife offered at auction that in form might have actually been made by a certain 19th century maker, and the knife carried his name on it. I called somebody who collects those knives to alert him to the auction. He replied that he not only knew the knife from examining it a few years ago, but that when he held it there was no maker's mark or name on it!

So...somebody must have bought the knife, paid good money for it, and now is stuck with something that he could not re-sell to any knowledgeable knife collector.

Larry