Welcome aboard, Paul! I do hope you'll be posting some pics of your Grandfather's knives! Don't hesitate to ask for help getting settled in around here. Lots of good folks who are anxious to lend a hand. Have fun, my friend!

Welcome to iKnife

Welcome to iKC!

Welcome to IKC

Welcome Paul!

I think first thing you should do is inventory everything! 

Paul,

Welcome to iKC and thanks for joining.  Max is right, do an inventory first thing.  The second is insurance, check your policy to see if they are covered.  You may have quite some value there

Third is enjoy them.  While doing the inventory, take the out and look at the.  I am sure he meant for you to enjoy them as he did.  Let us know if we can be of any help

Paul,  Welcome from another Cole.  I agree, inventory and insure.  Since you are new to this game, I recommend that you do a crash course in knife collecting and valuation.  I believe one of the first things you should do to get started along that path is to buy Bernard Levine's book "Levine's Guide to Knives and Their Value".  Case is one of, if not the most, collected marks in the knife world and your collection could be quite valuable.  DO NOT take any offers until you school yourself on this subject.  Jim

Oops, Bernie's page is http://www.knife-expert.com/

Sorry if I post multiple times, I'm still trying to get use to how this all works.  Thanks everyone, and I'm doing my best to take a full inventory of everything.  I'm just amazed at how much goes into each knife, reading dot patterns to determine year made, bone used, etc...  I've taken all day to do 20 knives, and I'm sure that I didn't get everything on them yet.  If anyone wants to see pictures please email me at paulcole@hotmail.com and I'll send you pics of what I have.  Thanks again all for you comments and help! 

Paul, there are alot of images that could help with the decoding of the tang stamps.  Try this, and click on the ones with all the tang stamp pics

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=case+tang+stamps&qpvt=case+...

Here are some pictures! 

Paul,

Just off the top of my head, it looks as though you have $8000 to $10000 in retail value.  Collector value may be higher, but as always it's all in what the market will bear. 

Here are some web sites to help in your quest:

http://bluegrassmountainknives.com/store/

http://www.allaboutpocketknives.com/

http://www.smkw.com/

Books:

Collecting Case Knives: Identificaton and Price Guide

Levine's Guide to Knives and Their Value

Hope this helps a little.

Jim