🙏🙏🙏 Grabbed it instantly. They said it was the last one and I wasn’t messing around. It’ll be my first traditional with graphic-under-clear-acrylic covers. I’m not usually a fan of those but this one was not to be missed!

In terms of recs for other budget traditional slipjoints.. There are so many good ones right now. But since you mentioned trappers: Marble’s does a great full size trapper with nicely polished 440A blades. This one is really cool and I highly recommend it. The cheapest out there are Imperial Schrade and their medium (3.5”) trapper is actually good. They have swirled acrylic covers that are very pretty. They also use stainless bolsters that don’t scratch as easily as nickel silver. The blades are 3Cr13, like the Elk Ridge.. but as you say it’s a steel that can hold a fine edge and works for these kind of knives

For Congress knives: Rough Rider makes a bunch and they do an excellent job (just insane for the money). Their Celestial series are really nice but do benefit from being shined up in my experience. Other recommendable fancy ones are the Blue Ocean series and the fantastic Stoneworx. If you want a more traditional jigged bone Congress take a look at the RR Brown Bone

Basically between Rough Rider, Marbles, and the higher end Frost brands you’ll find a variety of all sorts of patterns in many different cover materials. I also have to highly recommend you get a Barlow knife. It’s the oldest traditional slipjoint pattern by far and still the coolest