Price on a Chouinard Zero Axe

The MODEL ZERO Ice Axe & North Wall Hammer, with 55 Cm. laminated bamboo shafts, were introduced in the Chouinard Great Pacific Iron Works 1976 catalog. Wood shafts were discontinued on Chouinard axes in early 1979 in favor of synthetic blue shafts.

I can't even remember what I did with all my vintage wood and bamboo shaft Couinard Ice Tools.

On the evening of 20 August 1940, a man known as Frank Jacson called at a large house in the suburbs of Mexico City, and asked to see the ‘Old Man’ – as everyone called its celebrated resident, Leon Trotsky.
A few minutes later, the tip of the axe was buried more than two inches into Trotsky’s skull, becoming arguably the world’s most infamous murder weapon.


The axe was fleetingly displayed at a police press conference, but then disappeared for more than six decades.
In 2018 the bloodstained relic will go on public display at Washington’s International Spy Museum, which will reopen in a new building to accommodate thousands of other artifacts that have emerged from the shadows.

“The only chance he had was to kill him silently and then exit as a guest before they discovered the body,” Melton said.
A pistol would clearly not work in that case, and a dagger could not be guaranteed to kill Trotsky outright. By previous experience, the NKVD recommended blunt force to the back of the head to guarantee a completely silent death; to do the job Mercader stole the ice axe from his landlord’s son.

The axe is now among 5,000 artifacts that Melton is pledging to the International Spy Museum from his collection, which also includes a British one-man submarine used in second world war raids, and one of the plates used by the Nazis to forge perfect pound notes.

According to Melton, none of his treasures has quite the eerie presence of the ice axe. After letting Mercader into his study, Trotsky sat down to read his article, and the assassin attacked.
Trotsky let out a long scream and fought with his assailant until the guards arrived.

“I still remember looking through the open door and seeing my grandfather lying on the floor with his head bathed in blood and hearing him tell somebody to ‘keep the boy away, he shouldn’t see this’,” Volkov recalled on Wednesday. “I always thought that was a sign of his humanity. Even in a moment like that he was worried about me.”

Trotsky died of his wounds a little over 24 hours later in hospital. Mercader was put on trial and imprisoned for nearly 20 years.