The concerns that ivbaust and FP brought up are the some of the concerns I had when I first looked at the dagger....I have been collecting German edge weapons and Helmets for over 25 years but I still wanted Tom or Bill to check it out because it was engraved.You never know when messing with engraved Daggers whether was it done in 1935 or 2005. The Dagger is as found at the SOS. It has been seriously Cleaned Not by me. I have noticed that the letters t. h. i. r. have a underscore, and it was Gau marked Ns before being engraved.I think that The Ns Gau district is next to but not in Stendal.Not for sure about that.The punch marked engraving looks the same to me as the punch marked unit numbered daggers in Ralf Siegerts SA Dagger Book bottom of Page 74.The Dagger looks much better in hand than the pics posted.I do think what Tom Whittmann was looking for was the style of the lettering in the engraving he found no problems with it and ask me let him know if I did not buy it. I have bought SA daggers from this Dealer before and is he is trustworthy. One thought I had was possibly the Dagger was Won and engraved after the fact. Besides Tom W. and Bill S. Long time German Dealers Walter Dudgeon and (The Dagger Man) Jack Hundley looked the Dagger and found no problems with it. There are Little things you see when using a loupe that point to that maybe the guy that did the engraving was not as bad a engraver as we thought. My gut feeling on it is it is period done. Thanks for all your comments....... Dave The SS Dagger in the display case is the one I got from Paul Hogle last year and I posted pics then....but I can post more grin Best Regards, Jeff