I was poking around on Ebay recently and found this copy of a Leatherman PST. This is the first commercial product offered by Leatherman. They were manufactured from 1983 to 2004 with many minor changes made along the way, many of the known differences have been catalogued here: https://forum.multitool.org/index.php/topic,5877.0.html

Most Leatherman tools have a date stamp in the handles. Mine lacks the date stamp, so this dates it to pre 1992, which is when date stamps started. It also has the registered trademark number 1325473 stamped on the handle, which likely happened in the later half of the 1980s.

The leather case came in amazing shape. It looks virtually brand new.

The first thing I did was wipe the tool down with some gun oil using q-tips and cotton gun cleaning patches.

I used some leather cleaning solution to clean the case and then conditioned it. I’ll probably clean and re-oil it every month or two and condition the leather every six months or year to keep it from drying out. I paid $50 for it, but I bought it because I think these tools may increase in value over the next 10-30 years. I think this because Leatherman as a company, and the PST as a tool represent a huge shift in multitools.

Before Leatherman, most multitools were based around the knife. The primary example being tools produced by Victorinox. These tools were first produced in 1891.

Tim Leatherman was really the first person to dream up a multitool based on pliers rather than the knife. After the release of the PST many other brands began releasing pliers based multitools, including Gerber, Sog, and even the original multitool manufacturer, Victorinox has followed suit.

Despite being copied by many, and despite many Leatherman clones being sold on Amazon for a fraction of the price, Leatherman and his tool company continue to thrive, producing innovative designs that continue to set the standard other brands aim to achieve. When it comes to toughness, utility, and reputation, Leatherman is second to none. The only close competitor for reputation and quality is Victorinox.

I think the PST is as big of a shift in Multitool design as the iphone was to cellphones, and the laptop was to personal computing. Due to their long lifespan and durability, as well as the total number of PSTs made they may never be extremely valuable but I do enjoy the design and think my copy is an excellent example of the design.

The next item I plan to add to my collection is one of the Made in Japan models since they’re more rare.