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Although I believe that it was forbidden to alter the exterior appearance of the SA Dagger, I have never seen any official order stating that this was so.......so have you seen such an order?
The earliest and easy order to trace pertaining to the exterior of an SA dagger is "OSAF I Nr. 3707" date in early March 34. The spirit of this order is also repeated numerous times by the Soligen Chamber of Commerce & OSAF, they went so far as to complain about the lack of a standard for the grip wood and scabbard colors.
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By the same rule of thumb, it would therefore appear forbidden to mark up a dagger with the owner's personal name and number - but there have been enough of these coming out of the woodwork to convince me that they are genuine.
The pratice of marking the reverse crossguard with the owners unit, name or serial number does not alter the exterior appearence of the dagger while in wear. There is an SS order that required that SS R�hm dagger be marked with the owners SS number. I haven't been able to find an SA order relating to the marking of SA daggers but I believe that was more of an issue at the brigade level then an issue for the OSAF. There is a vague OSAF order pertaining to the use of Sturm funds for loans to purchase daggers for some SA men that implies the marking of these daggers, but the order is a unclear as to how the daggers where to be marked.
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So, going back to Kurpfalz, my distrust of this is simply that it does not identify the dagger to the original owner. No family name, no Standarte identification, no number - just the word Kurpfalz. It is, in my opinion, improbable. It might as well state "Donau", or "Sudetenland" or "Berlin-Brandenberg" - it doesn't make any sense, whereas an owner's name would make sense.
This is really a non issue for me because I don't believe the dagger is real. There are several period daggers that are unit marked with no direct tie to who the owner was. I can't accept a piece that I know is period with only a unit marking, then discount a piece that has SA gruppe name because I don't feel it's personal enough.
I'll post more later tonight.
