What is your experience with cheap knives from amazon or others? There are a lot of sub $50 knives there with mostly positive reviews. Are they actually good? Or do you have better cheap options that are not sponsored by amazon? I see brands on there like Lothar or Bergkvist. They actually have decent websites on their own, so I don’t know if they are actually that amazon trash or a decent budget brand.
for Europe https://www.knivesandtools.com or https://www.lamnia.com are trustworthy
in germany mercator too should be easily accessible directly from the producer ☞ https://www.otter-messer.de