Excalibur Letter Opener

Product Information/Specifications

Information

When I first saw the Excalibur letter opener, I thought it looked nice.  However, I didn't know what it was for.  I originally thought it was just an item that you put on display.  It was only after I brought it from eBay that I learned that it was a letter opener.  I paid a bit more than the suggested retail price without the shipping.

The Excalibur letter opener has been reissued two times already & all of them have been sold out within its year lifespan.  I think I got the second issue.

Some of the pictures aren't clear & good.  If I have time, I'll redo the bad ones & repost them.

Excalibur Letter Opener in package

I took two pictures of Excalibur, one from my scanner & one from my camera, since the gold letters on the plastic packaging couldn't show up on the scanner.

 
Excalibur out of the package

Excalibur is placed in a nice hard form protective sleeve.  With or without the packaging, it's packaged very nicely for display purposes.  The sword is completely made of metal as well as the sheath.  Also, it's quite heavy for its size.  Excalibur slides into its sheath very smoothly.  However, it slides off of it smoothly as well.  So, it's recommended that you don't place with it the sheath from the bottom without anything to support it with as it will slide off from Excalibur.

 
Witness the awesome power of Excalibur!

The engravings of the Excalibur designs are very good.  The lines are even & don't have any rigid edges.  Very smooth on both the sword & the sheath. Sadly, the blade isn't gold like the prototype design that I saw on EXhaust's website.  That would have been very nice.  Also, the tip of the sword is very sharp.  You can pierce your finger on it well, although I don't know why you would want to do it.  The edges aren't too sharp, but you should handle it with care since this is a letter opener.  Although Excalibur looks excellent, the gold chroming is really a tearjerker in a sad way.

 
OH MY GOD!!!!

The gold chroming really brings down the quality of Excalibur.  When I was examining with the sword, I noticed a lot of chip marks on the side of the sheath.  Because of the gold's shine in the pics, you may not be able to see the bare metal on it.  When I flip the sword & sheath around on the other side, it was very bad.  You can see the chrome coming off as if it was scratched or worn out.  The makers must of really hid these problem spots by not displaying them on the front packaging window side.  It really made me think twice about whether to take it out of the foam & displaying it somewhere.  I'm not sure if it's only mine's or a lot of them are like that.

Overall Conclusion

The Excalibur letter opener is really a good looking item, despite its purpose in being a letter opener.  However, the chroming job seriously hurts it.  At the time of writing this review, I have it back in its packaging after opening it once for inspection.  I have no idea if I should take it out again to display after seeing that bad chroming job.  Overall, it's just a collector's item for die hard TYPE-MOON & Fate fans.

On a scale of ten, I give the Excalibur letter opener 7.5.  The engravings are great & the appearance of the sword & sheath is very good.  Plus, its sharpness really gives its sword appearance.  However, the chroming job really brought the score down.  If it was done well, I would have given this item a nine.

TYPE-MOON & Fate fans would probably scramble to get this, but there isn't a real need for it.  Unless you open letters with letter openers, this isn't very useful product.  I don't see any other use of this besides opening letters & displaying it somewhere.

Getting this may be a problem.  I've only seen these pop up on online auctions.  Personally, I don't think there will be a major price value increase on this.  But, price markdowns are very unlikely.

Photo was taken using Sony DSC-F828 digital still camera & HP scanjet 4470c.

Last updated on February 19, 2008