In 2012 Victorinox produced a small quantity of about 200 pieces of the well known First Mate. It has the standard silver scales with the red logo. The backside scale carries the engraving panel. This is probably the first First Mate batch with this new backside scale with engraving panel with the cut out for the marlinspike. All First Mate models produced before had the old style scale without the engraving panel. In 2012 Victroinox ran out of stock of this type of scales and was forced to produce new scales with the engraving panel to be able to produce more marlinspike models.
On the next few images we can see the two differences between this new silver First Mate and the batch produced between 2005 – 2008.
Backside scales and tang stamp were changed. The new tang stamp shows the V in the same size as the other characters.
A bit First Mate history …
The First Mate was first produced by Victorinox in the 1960’s. Back then it had red scales with a silver cross. The early models had brass liners and an Elinox tang stamp. Later the brass liners were replaced with nickel silver and also the tang stamp change a few times as for all Alox models.
Between 2005 and 2008 Victorinox produced about 600 pieces of the First Mate with silver scales. This batch had the old backside scales without the engraving panel. The V on the tang stamp was higher as the other characters.
In 2011 two First Mate special run were produced. A blue one with the old style front scale and an olive green with the new style frontscale. Both with the old backside scales. And both with all tools black coated.
From 2012 till 2014 six more First Mate special run were produced. For details about these six other First Mate see my earlier posts. Links are below the last images…
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Links to older blog posts about First Mate special run.