A folding knife with an M390 blade and a titanium handle should cost more than $99. The reason one does not is the same reason the person who posted about it on r/knives could not find a second seller.
The thread, posted to r/knives on October 30 by u/I3uIlets, is short and specific. The author is about to order a knife with M390 steel, a titanium handle and a hardness figure above 62 HRC for $99. His question is not whether it is a good deal. It is whether anyone else stocks it, because waiting for the shipment to clear China is the part he does not enjoy.
The knife in question is the M Miguron Gents, sold direct for $99.99. Three-inch drop point in M390, satin finished, 0.11 inch stock, hardness listed at 62 plus or minus one, a titanium handle, a button-actuated liner lock and a weight of 2.54 ounces. Miguron's own store lists the same steel in a 3.15-inch crossbar model called the Vakor for $99.75, and a crystal-titanium version of that knife at $119.95.
Where the three-figure price goes
M390 is a powder-metallurgy stainless from Bohler with roughly 20 percent chromium and 4 percent vanadium, designed for wear resistance. A finished blade in it usually shows up on a folder priced between $180 and $300 from a European or American brand, and the steel itself is not what separates those knives from a $99 one. Bar stock is a small line item next to heat treatment, grinding, finishing and the number of hands the knife passes through before a customer opens the box.
A US brand typically buys from a factory, imports through a distributor, sells to a dealer at wholesale and then to a customer at retail. Each step needs a margin, and the knife's price carries all of them. Miguron is the factory. Its own description of the business is CNC machining, CNC grinding, EDM work and in-house titanium anodizing, with OEM contracts on the side. Selling direct removes two of those margins, which is the entire arithmetic behind a titanium M390 folder under $100.
What the missing middle costs you
No dealer network means nobody in the United States has the knife on a shelf for you to handle first. A return goes back across the Pacific. Warranty work runs on email and shipping labels rather than a phone call to a service center in Oregon. Those are real costs, and the Reddit thread is essentially a customer discovering them one at a time.
The hardness figure deserves a second look too. M390 at 62 HRC is harder than most production runs of the same steel, which buys edge retention and gives up toughness. On a blade measuring 0.11 inch at the spine, that trade shows up if the knife meets a staple or a drop onto tile. Miguron publishes the range as 62 plus or minus one, so a soft batch would still sit at the top of the usual window rather than outside it.
Spend the same $99 on a knife from a brand with a dealer network and the steel changes before anything else does. Kubey's Caiman runs 14C28N at 60-62 HRC for $70. Bestechman's Cicada's Wing-TL asks $109 for the same steel in a glow carbon fiber handle. Neither is a worse knife. Both are priced for a supply chain that includes somebody who will answer the phone.
What happens next is the part worth watching. If a US dealer picks up the line, the $99 disappears and the argument about M390 pricing goes with it. If the direct model holds, the same question will be asked about the next steel, and the answer will be the same one Miguron is giving now.