420HC and my General Steel Snobbery...explained
A discussion came up yesterday comparing the performance of carbon steels against stainless steels. Now, the gentleman who originally posted, mainly criticized the abysmal performance of stainless steels way the hell back in the day before technology was even a word, and claims that his carbon steel blades have lasted him since forever ago, and is the best thing ever, and does not see any merit in the modern stainless steels because carbon steel is such awesome sauce.
The flaw with that blanket comparison is that stainless steels back in the day were godawful, and modern technology has allowed us to create awesome steel compositions like CPM S30V, S90V, Elmax, S35VN, and all of these are likely to perform just as equally well compared to carbon steels this guy would have had access to back in the Stone Age, not to mention these new stainless steels are also pretty damn good at being really rust-resistant, something that his blades would not be very good at, at all. I should also mention that the newer stainless steels simply haven't been around long enough to truly compare them over 20 years like the carbon steels have had time for.
Long story short, this devolved into a segway conversation with another poster about the performance vs. value of 420HC. Let's face it. 420HC is one of those dinosaur steels that companies still produce for some weird reason that no real knife consumer likes, but simply puts up with because they're left with no other options. It's the AUS8 of the budget steel world, 420HC being categorized as tier 1, and AUS8 being a slight step up into tier 2, where something like 9Cr18MoV and D2 would be tier 3, but also considered budget steels. They're arbitrary tiers that have no real rhyme or reason, but let's just put them there to distinguish the difference between the three.
My steel snobbery focuses less on performance of said steel and places a huge emphasis on value. If I can get a tier 3 steel at $20, even $25, then I should be able to get ALL knives in a tier 3 steel for $25. I shouldn't even bother with a tier 1 or tier 2 at $25 then. I also shouldn't bother with a tier 3 steel past $25, unless there is a specific design that is unique and worth the extra money to utilize the design. Why bother with 420HC when there's plenty of Chinese-made knives that use 9Cr18MoV, perform better, and are at the same price point or less.
Much like a trading card game's power curve graphs, the points on the graph are favorable when they are above the base line, and unfavorable when below this line. If a card has 4 mana, 5 strength, 5 health, and then a new card comes out with 4 mana, 6 strength, 6 health, then it's a direct replacement and you shouldn't ever play the original card since the new one is better in every way. Same goes for knives. The whole point is to not have knives below this line that you set for yourself.
I hope I didn't make this post too long. I could expand on it further, but this should serve as a small glimpse into my mind on how I value blade steels and knives in general. I know that most people don't have this sort of system in place, and just buy whatever because it looks cool, or it's marketed in such a way to make you buy it, but my goal is to get you to see the value in the knife you're buying, not just its price.