Nice find John,congrats
Stingray
Under rated, and very rare. Congrats, John. In my 12 years as a dealer, I've only bought ONE NPEA out of the woodwork. Several Himmlers, several SS Honor daggers, but only ONE NPEA.
Congrats John on putting together a consecutive numbered pair.
Hi John congrats on a fine addition to your NPEA collection. What do you or Ron W make of the fact that 35 is a leaders' dagger and 36 is a students'?
Does anyone have B34 or B37 to give a clue?
Very nice find ,a rare dagger indeed
John,
Great consecutive numbered pair!
The dagger for MOST Schools were numbered without respect to rank or type. It is hard to find any Bensberg School daggers, especially in the first 100. What I found in research seems to be that the first issued NPEA Daggers were almost always in the below 100 numbers for most of the early schools. The daggers from Bensberg that were later or higher numbers were of a different size and font. Good find John.
I'm with Craig here. In over 350 motel buys, I found ONE NPEA Student Dagger.
Thanks for the info Ron I notice all the Bensberg daggers in you book are Eickhorn.John is B35 a Burgsmuller too?
Glad you got it John, it has the right home:)!
See you in a couple of weeks,
Bob
Yes,the B35 is also a Burgsmuller.
I think the change from Burgsmuller to Eickhorn occurred around 100 fom what I have seen in other schools.
Ron in your book you show B68 (an Eickhorn) with the different font stamping
Amazing how information still keeps coming along
That's correct, its an Eickhorn
Ron in the book you state that B68 has a (nickel) silver eagle suggesting it was a leader or instructors dagger depending on the scabbard.As John's four Burgsmuller daggers would suggest that even though Bensberg was in the Solingen area they got their initial supply of daggers from Burgsmuller admittedly a retailer but at odds with previous held opinion that their initial dagger supply was from Eickhorn.Could it be that the original Burgsmuller B68 was a student dagger and became a graduation inscribed dagger and was later replaced in the school's inventory by the B68 Eickhorn you show in the book? We may never know but congrats to John Merling with his fine collection of these scarce and unfortunately much reproduced daggers
Nice find Doc you’re on a roll
NPEA daggers are one of my favorites and are very rare.
Gailen
I don't believe ANY Eickhorn student daggers were made without the grip eagle. All Eickhorns that I know came directly out of the woodwork had a grip eagle, including their student daggers. I don't believe in the Staff Leader concept with NPEA Daggers. I was told by NPEA Students and from interviews from teachers tha the issue Leader Daggers came with a bayonet type scabbard at the school for use in the field and on exercises.
So, what you fined with Burgsmuller pieces with an eagle in the grip in the student scabbard are officer daggers that were found after the war in the extra scabbard (I have only seen a couple that I know came back this way with the early Burgsmuller Charlottenburg TM). No printed, factual evidence has ever been found to counter this believe. This is why you see all the late, unissued Eickhorn student daggers with an eagle in the grip because that's the only way Eickhorn manufactured them. If this was not the case, where are all the plain grip Eickhorn NPEAs???
Another interesting fact about the Berlin Charlottenburg student daggers for the early school's (probably the first 10 or so), had some traits that keeps that consistant from school to school. The type of crossguard and markings, tang marks, and scabbards.
We see that blued scabbards were first issued with a felt green cover for the scabbar's protection (they didn't hold up and many were painted later on as were the next issue).
I have yet to find an original, blued scabbard on an issue dagger that was not numbered under the 100 range and wasn't a Burgsmuller.
Again, all this is in my second NPEA work: "Waffenleite Presenting NPEA Daggers of the Third Reich" available to all members of GermanDaggers.com at the discount price of $49.95 plus $5.00 shipping.
John,
Great consecutive numbered pair!
Yes ! Congrats John on finding a consecutive numbered pair of NPEA daggers. A rarity.
Just Great.
-serge-