The Swiss Army Knife

Most people have bought the same pocket knife four times. They bought four different cheap ones, a tenner each, from four different checkout displays.

The money leaks out in small amounts. A €12 multitool from a bargain bin feels like nothing. The joints loosen inside a year. The edge stops holding. The cheap steel spots with rust. You buy another one, and the €12 feels like nothing again. Over a decade that drawer has eaten sixty euros and never once held a sharp knife.

A Victorinox Climber costs €34.49. It is the Swiss Army knife most people picture, fourteen tools folded into ninety-one millimetres of red cellidor. Blade, scissors, screwdrivers, can opener, corkscrew, tweezers. The steel is hardened, the springs are riveted, the parts are serviceable. Victorinox guarantees it for life against material and manufacturing defects and repairs the ones that fail. Carried daily, one of these runs twenty years without complaint. Many run far longer.

Here is the arithmetic that matters.

The gap is the replacement tax. You pay it in small, forgettable instalments. It adds up to more than three times the cost of buying once. Spread the Climber across twenty years of near-daily use and each cut costs a fraction of a cent. The cheap knife never gets there, because it never lasts long enough to be cheap.

Then there is what happens at the other end. Discontinued Victorinox models hold a steady collector market. Vintage Tinkers, Escorts and Huntsmen change hands on eBay every day, often above their original price. Your Climber ages into something a collector will want. That is the patina dividend. Quality goods amortise. Disposable goods depreciate.

The brass pivots darken. The cellidor scales pick up the marks of your pocket and your keys. The blade wears a little narrower with each sharpening and takes a finer edge for it. After fifteen years the knife reads as yours. It still sells.

Own better. Buy it once, carry it for thirty years, and keep the eighty-odd euros the drawer would take.

Verdict: €34.49 once, a lifetime of carry, and a resale market waiting at the end.