Sheldon Levy

From 1992 until 2003, Sheldon Levy published The Automatic Knife Resource Guide and Newsletter. Appearing quarterly, the forty-five issues of The Newsletter constituted “the single most important publication in the entire history of automatic knives”, to quote Dan Fuller.
In the US, a Federal law prohibits interstate commerce in switchblades. This law was adopted in 1958, because of sensational hearings on juvenile delinquency held by Senator Kefauver. It does not prohibit ownership of automatic knives. That is regulated by each state. As with gun laws, some states virtually prohibit ownership and others have no regulation. (Europeans will find it bizarre that in many states, automatic knives are more strictly regulated than firearms.)
Before Sheldon Levy started publishing The Newsletter, collecting automatic knives was a semi-clandestine activity. Sheldon brought switchblades out of the shadows and into the collector’s spotlight. This was pre-Internet, and most people didn’t even realize that switchblades were legal in most places. Sheldon created a community.
There are few books on switchblades, and most are quite specialized. For an overview of the history of these blades and information on all the different designs that have been produced, this remains the best source.
Thanks to Walt Halucha, a complete Table of Contents of each issue, sample articles, and an index of the entire publication run is available at http://latama.net/latamaHome.html . All back issues remain in print.… (mer)