Named after a venomous snake and costing a pretty $150,000, the Platinum Mamba knife might be the most bizarre yet alluring tool we’ve been charmed by since this extravagant peddle-boat or $22,000 Leica camera.
The Platinum Mamba, crafted by Sandrin Knives out of Italy, features 320 diamonds at 14.17 karats, Wyoming black jade, and tungsten carbide, a chemical compound that’s super difficult to shape into a usable blade but gives the Platinum Mamba a hardness of HRC71.
Don’t bother Googling that number — just know that tungsten carbide (the real crown jewel of the knife) is sharp as hell and holds on to that sharpness a dozen times over compared to run-of-the-mill steel.
Fun fact: Pretty much the only material that can shave down tungsten carbide is diamond. While the material is super wear-resistant, it’s also susceptible to breakage if not ground down correctly, says American Cutting Edge.
Did we mention this knife is $150,000?
Cost was apparently no concern when Rob Bianchin, founder and CEO of Cabot Guns, called up Alessandro Colombatto, director of Sandrin Knives and second-generation tungsten carbide artisan, to say (we’re paraphrasing, obviously), “Let’s make a knife nobody can buy because we can.”
We joke — the real idea was to produce a single record-breaking knife that embodied a “journey into the art and science of knife making,” says Colombatto.
“The desire to possess an object that’s as rare, beautiful, and yes, useful as the Platinum Mamba is deeply embedded in the human soul; it’s an instinct that’s existed since the dawn of man,” Colombatto continued.
Metallurgists at Sandrin worked with the company’s patented polyhedral tungsten carbide to draft iteration over iteration, eventually yielding what the brand is calling the hardest steel knife ever created. Then the team upped the ante by adding rare materials like the diamonds and Wyoming black jade to the handle. Because diamonds are an Italian knife maker’s best friend.
Interested parties who would really (I mean, really?) spend $150,000 on a knife as fancy as the Platinum Mamba must fill out a form online. That’s the first barrier of entry into this exuberant world of knives that cost as much as Teslas and houses.
Of course, if you’re looking for an everyday carrying knife, you could always pinch a few pennies and grab one of these champs.
