i bought a sa today and the fittings appear copper plated
marine sa??

Very strange, may be nickel-silver was seriously contamined to the verdigris or others elements, can you post entire dagger pictures?

Highly unusual. Can you tell what the dark coating is? It doesn't look like nickel. Could be a marine example that somebody coated over the guards. Because of the gau mark, no flash coat of copper should be on it. The nickel-silver guards were issued without plating, as a rule.

It is unusual, and I'm doing a little 'head scratching' on this one myself. Agreeing that some more inspection and additional images could very likely help in figuring out. FP

Who is the maker? And you may want to check the cross guards with a magnet. Some of the RZM makers used iron cross guards. The coating could be rust

Helbig used iron for crossguards and they were nickel-plated. They may or may not have used a copper flash coat before the nickel was applied. Usually, the plating holds up very well on Helbig's. Much better than on zinc-based guards. I think it would be unusual for a Helbig to be gau-marked, but stranger things have happened.

Zeiter used iron cross guards and they were flash coated under the nickle

the maker is carl schmidt
the cross guards are nickel
the eagle has copper in the wing lines and the scabbard mounts also appear to have a copper wash but not as heavy as the guards. the dagger came out of a shed and still had its original 3 piece hanger which is black

1

the black can be scraped off with a finger nail in some spots but mostly its very hard

eagle

top nut appears copper plated as well

2

To me it just looks very dirty and corroded.

could be but all the fittings patined to a copper colour and traces of copper in the eagles wing folds??

Hi nickn2, I posted some copper,and copper plated crossguards on the forum a couple of years ago,but the Search engine on the forum does not seem to search the old forum threads.
This is the only photo I can find.
cheers nats