The long-running and popular Spyderco Factory Seconds program offers fully functional, premium knives that exhibit minor cosmetic variations or non-critical deviations from "first quality" units at a substantial discount. These knives deliver the same reliable high performance and functionality as their primary production counterparts, but are specially marked with a notch near the hole on the right side (clip side) of the blade to denote that they were sold as factory seconds and thus ineligible for warranty services. They also do not come with any packaging or documentation. See pictures below for notch examples.

Please note that all sales are final for factory seconds - we cannot accept returns.

The comparison prices for these factory seconds are also showing the comparable MAP (US retail price) rather than the Spyderco MSRP to give you a more accurate sense of the savings as compared to buying new. However, several of these items have been discontinued, so buying new may not even be an option. Many of these items are priced below what wholesale cost would be for a "first quality" version and we hope it provides a compelling value for you.

Based on our inspections, our factory seconds may have none or multiple of the imperfections of varying severity as listed below, organized by frequency. However, this is not an exhaustive list and we may not have noticed all possible imperfections. 

 

MOST COMMON: You will probably see one or more of these:

• Minor, faint scratches & scuffs on blade 
  
• Scale scuffs
• "Streaky" stonewash (Namely 15V and Maxamet)
• "sticker shadow" - faint stain of the ID sticker that Spyderco put on the knife. We have done our best to clean each blade, but unfortunately were unable to remove it in some cases.

 

UNCOMMON: Most knives don't have these issues but many do:

• Lock stick (barely noticeable to significant, but nothing unreasonably crunchy)
• Detent is slightly too strong/too weak
• Minor blade play (all that we inspected were within our approximation of "first" condition range)
• Asymmetrical bevels
  
• Blade finish color is out of range (notably FDE PVD coated blades i.e., Avocados)
• Action is too tight / too loose
• Patina / minor corrosion spots
  
• Minor edge damage
• Scale color is out of range (most notably Blurple from S110V G10 variants)

 

RARE: Only a few have these

• Uneven bevels
• Inconsistent grind thickness
• Engraving errors
• Slightly chipped tip
• Blade has the wrong finish altogether (e.g. intended to be stonewashed but is satin)
• Scale texture is incorrect
• Blade warping (namely on some Maxamet)
• Spine and/or hole is not chamfered (enough?) and feel somewhat "sharp" (but not enough to cut you) - easy fix with a sharpmaker rod/small file.
• Lanyard tube rattle (extremely rare)
• Spine of the blade is chipped slightly
• No notch to denote it's a factory second (extremely rare)

 

Unfortunately, we cannot make any guarantees to honor any special requests about the unit you will be getting. However, on many of these knives, the reasoning behind why it was marked as a "second" is nearly imperceptible, especially when compared to normal factory "first" units. There have even been multiple cases where we've asked a QA person from Spyderco what problem something had and they couldn't tell from a close inspection. 

ALL SALES FINAL - unfortunately we are unable to accept returns on factory seconds, but we believe the exceptional discounts can help make up for the tradeoffs.

 

Some examples:

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Please note, factory second units are not eligible for Spyderco's limited lifetime warranty and feature a distinctive notch on the spine near the hole to indicate this. See the dropdown above for more information.

Rest assured, the precision craftsmanship, quality materials, and user serviceability inherent to every Spyderco product largely eliminates the need for any warranty services, even for factory seconds. 

We are also unable to accept returns on factory second products and thus all sales are final. Thank you for your understanding :)