I was looking at the M9s on EBAY again and I found this knife interesting
Here is a link to the auction
Here is the description:
Quote:What we have is a genuine Buck M-9 Bayonet in Black / Ebony. Stampings read like this. Buck 188n USA. Some call this a upside down U. Printing is on 3 lines. It also has a dolphin stamp on the knife. I would say this M9 was never used. And it has the original edge very sharp. The sheath is also black and has the dolphin under the stone and the sheath is Bianchi Military. And it has the pouch that will hold extra pistol magazine like 9mm / 45 /Etc. The buttons on the sheath are nice and black with no brass showing. This is one bad ass Special Forces militar issue bayonet. Again this looks like to me it just came out of the wax shipping paper and never issued or used. It also has the wire cutter on the scabbard. So if you want that very rare Buck Bayonet this is your chance. How many unissued black buck M-9 do you find in this condition / new. That is all I can tell you about this Item. This was made for the United States Black Rifle In 5.56X45 or 223 Rem.
I contacted the seller and shared some info that I am going to repeat here. This knife was made in 1997 based on the blade markings of an upside down "U". This is significant in that this was the last year that Buck made the M9 bayonet as this was the year when their tooling finally wore out.
To my knowledge, Buck was not selling M9 Bayonets to the government since 1992 (I welcome anybody to correct me if I am wrong) as LanCay had the contract at that time. From 1992 to 1997 Buck was making these knives for civilian or perhaps a few military PX stores.
Following are some photos of this knife from the auction: