>> Perfect example of trying to analyze something logically without any knowledge of what you are talking about.
The purpose of illustrating this bowie example was not trying to analyze it from technical angle. But look at it from business perspective. Just searched "Bowie" on ebay and amazon, there are tons of knives selling from $5 to $150. Those must be fakes then.
On structure, knife's structure is much simpler than any firearms. No law controls making either. Given the eye-popping price of "genuine antique Bowie", in theory, there should be lots of high quality fakes too. Unfortunately, that's the way.
Hopefully, the bidders of those Bowies know what they have won. Of course they know? Not necessarily, there was bidder winning reblued 42 Mauser banner for $5.5k,,,, you know, the risk of $50k bowie is 10 time higher, and, consider complexity factor, the risk could be 100 times higher.
And, "handmade" by itself could be a big trap. Handmade means it can appear in any form. In C&R firearm domain, collectors compare samples against samples, compare thousands, or even tens of thousands of samples to summarize out something. In handmade world, comparison obviously won't work well. How about by provenance? Is there any provenance mentioned in auction... no... even mentioned, is that story sound?
Conclusion: playing bowie is like playing fire at home. Technical detail is secondary. That's decided by its nature, not by its details
It's for people loving challenge.