UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons Army, Navy, and Luftwaffe Forum I have a 3 days inspection: help me.

Even if My wife says I'll bring the family in bankruptcy, I have the opportunity to buy some of these 4 dags.
Usually this dealer sold me good antiquitates and militaria, but sometime he too falls on some banana peel:

a) is unmarked and with a pack pommel,but the
guard?
b) is unmarked but with waffenamt 5, pommel is
for sure a SMF but the handle ring is not
provided with the single SMF acorn and the
guard seems not a SMF
c) is a SMF with a correct guard, partially
gilded, the pommel too is gilded but, to
me,its not a SMF
d) this is a part dagger for sure: blade pack,
pommel pack but guard smf, isn't it?

P.S. Dave, thanks again for yr mail: this is a friendly group of people just because there are person like you.
A1


A2


B1


B2


C1


C2

C3

C4

C5


D1

D2

I fear that my contribution will not satisfy you: I cannot make a statement to each single part of these daggers. Generally I have seen nearly all (doubtless period) possible mixtures of parts. Even "big" companies like EICKHORN and WKC did so. It is the faith of the word textbook (whose "textbook"?) that daggers which do not conform to the point are worth less and are less desired.
New collectors and those who do "collect" for investment reasons naturally are highly recommended to stay on the "textbook" side. If you do collect for joy you for sure need some experience to know what to look after when you do examine if a dagger was period assembled or not. Imo a recent assamblance of parts could be detected as nearly no exchanging of parts can be made without cetain traces. Look especially at the scabbard mouth, the opening of the crossguard where the tang has to be put through and the fit of the grip to the pommel and the ferrule. If there are any traces of grinding or new/mis- fit it mostly is a recent parts assembling. I think that careful parts assembling made decades (but post war) ago hardly can be detected as also parts assembling of by chance matching parts.
As due to my observations as good as all manufacturers did use parts of other producers during the period normaly I do restrict myself on the overall fit of a dagger and as mentioned the special fit (traces of grinding) of certain parts.
Generally I think that there are still so much "textbook" 2nd mod. lufts around (also for relative cheap prices) that there is no personal need to change to such kind of "non textbook" dagger if you are unsecure about them.
I cannot see any "red flag" (postwar) part in the daggers shown by you. But a careful in hand inspection concerning postwar fitting has to be done.