Man Stumbles Across Nazi Knives at Utah Yard Sale: ‘Suddenly Felt Unsafe’

A thrifty man got more than he bargained for after stumbling upon a pair of “Nazi knives” while perusing items at a yard sale.

Jonathan, from Utah, has encountered a number of unusual items at yard sales over the years, but he told Newsweek this was “probably the strangest” discovery he had made to date.

“Well, the yard sale was definitely for a kind of a weird house. Mostly music metal merchandise—Slayer, etc.—and knives,” Jonathan said. “The house was mostly empty; they must have been moving. I saw a black bag of things and went through it. That’s when I pulled out the Nazi knives.”

The discovery left him shocked. “I do quite a bit of thrifting and have never seen items like that,” he said.

In a post shared to Reddit under the handle u/Urbansaintangel, Jonathan gave users a glimpse of the two knives, adorned with visible swastikas.

“I was surprised to see them, and I wanted to check more if they were real or not because I was sure that if they were, they’d be worth a lot of money,” Jonathan said.

However, when he tried asking a woman nearby who was running the sale, he got an unexpected response. “The lady looked over and said that stuff wasn’t for sale and snatched it from me,” Jonathan said.

It was then that Jonathan began to suspect something else: that the knives were not antiques but rather more modern pieces. That idea left him alarmed.

“I suddenly felt unsafe there thinking I didn’t want to be around people that would possess these,” he said.

“I figured that they were probably someone’s there or left over by people. People probably buy those things just to come off a certain way or adopt themselves into a community. But it’s probably mostly fueled by ignorance.”

Though they represent a minority, there are some in the United States who support the right to hold neo-Nazi views. A 2017 Statista survey of just over 1,000 U.S. adults found that 9 percent of Americans thought it was acceptable for people to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views.

Many of those commenting on Jonathan’s Reddit post agreed that the knives were likely replicas rather than anything from World War II.

That somehow made the discovery a bit more unsettling. As one Redditor commented on the post, “I honestly think that it’s icky that people collect modern replicas of Nazi stuff. It doesn’t even have the excuse of being historical.”

“Regardless of whether they were authentically owned by actual German Nazis is irrelevant for the most part, the symbolism is still there, and that’s the part that matters,” Another Reddit user commented.

A third commenter wrote: “Collecting historic artifacts is fine. it’s when it’s only that one particular side people have a collection of (or worse it’s just that side and just reproductions) where it gets dicey.”

Though Jonathan steered clear of the knives in the end, the trip was not a total bust. “I actually bought some Carhart jackets,” he said.