I live in the Birmingham, AL area, and down here in Alabama I don’t really expect to find a nice knife store around every corner. It’s just not populous enough. However, in Vestavia Hills south of Birmingham, there’s a store called Mark’s Outdoors. It’s a very nice store, but the highlight for me is the knife counter. It’s massive. The guy who runs it(Randy) believes in having a very wide selection and letting the customer decide what sells, so he’s got a very diverse array of knives(including just about every Spyderco that comes out, and I’m a fanboy for them so…).
More interestingly, he believes in having very high-end stuff, which means there’s somewhere I can go to handle Sebenzas and Striders and other customs, which is really neat even if I can’t afford any such thing right now.

Now all that was to build context for yesterday. I was in there, and a guy who collects and brings in higher-end stuff comes in and has brought Randy a knife. He pulls it out and they start talking about it, and I almost instantly recognize it(before Randy; I was kinda happy with myself on that  ) because I’d seen reviews of it on EverydayCommentary.
It’s a TAD Dauntless. Now, from what I’ve read of this thing, it’s very difficult to find on the secondhand market, and practically impossible to order one from a vendor. So, to me, this was more unique to handle and look at then some of the customs, because on those you could always call up the maker and order a new one. This one was a bit more unicorn-like. Suffice it to say, I was geeking out pretty hard over this one. It’s not exactly my usual style of knife, but it’s one of those that’s so good and so well made that if I could’ve bought it right there I would have; worst case is I have it for a few days and just stare at it then resell it to one of you guys.

Here are a couple of pics I snapped. The packaging was very high-quality, and came with a pry tool and a skull bead.

So if you’re anywhere near Birmingham, I highly recommend Mark’s. I’ve yet to find anywhere else in the area that sells knives well enough to even be worth mentioning.