CUTCO cutlery, four pieces

Certain brands of cutlery sell on eBay for very nice prices, and two of the most profitable brands of cutlery I can think of are Wusthof and Cutco. Not only are these pricey brands, they're actually out there for you to find and buy, so learn what they look like.

The Cutco company has been making the best cutlery you can buy for over 60 years, and I can't think of a better brand name to watch for! CUTCO Cutlery was introduced back in 1948 as a brand new product for Wear-Ever Aluminum, which was a subsidiary of ALCOA. They got the name of their new cutlery line from a company once owned by Wear-Ever, the Cooking UTensil COmpany. CUTCO!

To start off on the right foot, ALCOA sought the finest cutlery manufacturer in the U.S. at the time, Case Cutlery in Bradford, Pa., to manufacture the new cutlery line. It was a joint venture that created a new ALCOA company called Alcas Cutlery (AL of ALCOA and the CAS from Case). The new Alcas Cutlery factory in Olean, N.Y. was completed in 1949, and the first set of cutlery was shipped to New Kensington, Pa. that same year.

Whenever you're considering the purchase of any used cutlery, always inspect every piece to make sure that it hasn't been resharpened, because sloppy sharpening (remeber the knife sharpeners that were built into those big old electric can openers?) will reduce what a knife - or a set of knives - will sell for.

Whenever you're inspecting a butcher block set of knives, be very careful to pull out and inspect every piece, not only to check for sharpening, but to make sure the seller hasn't slipped in an off-brand knife to fill in for a lost Cutco knife!

One of the easiest ways to spot Cutco cutlery is by the thick woodgrain plastic handles. What's interesting to note here is that even the old and worn out pieces will sell on eBay, apparently because they can be sent back to the company for credit toward new cutlery.