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Recently when my grandfather passed away, we had to go and clean out his house, which was a horrible thing to have to do. I felt like I was invading his space, even though he was no longer alive it felt a little too personal to go through all his belongings. Because I felt this way, my mother left me to go through the attic, I felt a little bit better about this, because I knew that he has stuff in the attic packed up from a younger day, things that he felt were important enough to save, but yet it wasn't quite like going through his underwear drawer. I started going through the boxes and found old letters and photos, it was really quite an adventure. I found an old knife in one of the boxes and although it was old, it did recognize that it was a Ka-Bar. A Ka-Bar was a hunting knife that was developed in 1898 and later in World War II it was used by service men to fight hand to hand combat. I knew what it was, and when I went downstairs I asked my mother if she would mind if I kept it. She said it really didn't matter to her, since she was only going to be able to keep so much of grandaddy's stuff anyway, I may as well take what I want. Well, when I got home after a long day of rummaging through my grandfather's house, I went online to look up information about the knife I had found. After a while of not being able to find the same exact one, I got frustrated and gave up, but I still was curious because I wanted to find out what this bowie like knife was really worth, and when it was made. Finally, I just decided to take it for an appraisal, and I found out that it was not from WWII as I had first thought, it was actually an original Ka-Bar which was made in 1899. The guy asked me if I wanted to sell it, but I said no. He offered me $2000 for it, but I told him that it was my grandfather's and no amount of money could get that knife out of my possession. At least now I know it is worth something, so I will definitely get it insured and put it in some type of display case.