Pick 5 Under $50 (Last 5 EDC Knives Ever)

I've gotten really into watching Birdshot IV videos lately and love the videos they do about picking 5 knives from their collection that will hypothetically be their last EDC knives for the rest of their lives. I thought it'd be fun to do the pick 5 under $50 version, since most of my knives are under that price point anyways. I did this about a month ago but am just now getting around to getting this post up. If you've kept up with my videos, you probably won't be surprised by what I picked.

So here are all the 13 options I had to choose from. I'm going to attempt to list them out from left to right working my from the top to the bottom. Starting with the silver knife in the top left, we've got the CRKT Jettison, CRKT Pilar, CRKT Ritter, Mora Eldris, Cold Steel Mini Tuff Lite, Ontartio Rat 2, Ontario Rat 1, Sanrenmu 681, Spyderco Ladybug, Spyderco Dog Tag, Boker Subcom, Kershaw Cinder, and Boker Kalashnikov. If you want to hear more about any specific ones, just check out the gear thoughts tab. I should have most of them reviewed by now. I did a video of this where you can see most of my process for why certain knives got eliminated. It wasn't as hard to narrow it down to five as I thought. Some of them weren't practical enough to have as my only options, while one in particular just plain sucks. 

If I could only pick five of my knives that are under $50 to be my EDC options for the rest of my life, they'd have to be the Ontario Rat 2, Mora Eldris, Boker Subcom, Cold Steel Mini Tuff Lite, and Spyderco Ladybug. The Rat 2 is about the biggest blade I think I'd ever realistically need on a daily basis, hence the majority of these being smaller knives. It's the best mid-sized knife I've tried over the years. I thought it was just over hyped, yet that's not the case at all. It is truly such a great knife for $30. I'm not around knife people every day, so I do like to have smaller, people-friendly options. The Ladybug is my favorite keychain sized knife out there. The Cold Steel Mini Tuff Lite and Boker Subcom are both smaller options that I really love. I'd be fine with the Eldris being my only fixed blade option. I don't have much of a use for them in my EDC nowadays, though I do think having one around is important. For $25, you can't beat it. It's such a high value knife that can take a beating. All these knives are what I consider to be perfect, so I don't think it'd be too bad to have them as my hypothetical options for the rest of my life. If I had to narrow it down to just one, it'd be between the Rat 2 and Ladybug. I'd probably go for the Rat 2 since it can handle bigger tasks better than the Ladybug might. Check out the video if you want to hear more about the selection process. I might try to do another one of these out of my whole collection or revisit it in the future. Thanks for looking!