UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons SA & NSKK Dagger Forum What is this worth?

Hi. Newbie here. I just discovered this site because a long time friend just gave me this knife to figure out it's value. I know nothing, and already I have discovered there are vast differences in suspected value, and MANY fakes and counterfeits. I wasn't around when her grandfather was issued this knife, but, she IS German, her father IS German, and her grandfather immigrated here after the war, and didn't like to talk about it much, which seems to me to be legit. Most vets I know wo saw combat don't. Most vets of foreign wars who fought on the other side REALLY don't. ESPECIALLY THAT side. She said that HE said that he had to enlist to survive. That it was a very hostile environment for men of fighting age NOT to enlist for the Fatherland, Could be true or could be an excuse to "please don't hate me and persecute me for the horrific things I did when I was young". I've heard that one before from another friend's dad who was Ukraine I think, living in Poland, and was a Waffen SS. "Had to join after they invaded Poland to survive, yet he secretly says they made him/them do horrific crap he did with what seems like little to no remorse. Again, I know little to NOTHING. I can't judge.Instinct is to survive, no matter WHAT. He ended up a door to door salesman in the US. What can I say? Better than the people who's lives he helped destroy. I digress.

Back to "Grampa" who said this is a common soldier's knife. I googled that. I got an auction that the knife looked exactly like this one for what they claimed was an SS issued dagger, and it sold for $9500!!! I was shocked, not only of the price but what that statement rev eased about her grandfather... Or so I thought. Today, I found this forum and compared the dagger to your ID gallery, and it seems this is an SA knife, which would be more in line with what he claimed all along. I see differing prices on these. It seems to be true in nature due to the quality of it's build, however, again, I know nothing. It has a slight bit of rust on the edges of the blade, but I think this is easily removed without damaging the knife. Very thin layer and no deep pitting. Are these Stainless? Another thing is I read that these came with a nickel silver hand guard and pommel and the different metal parts? Same for the scabbard? This looked to me to be of brass at first glance and I though the same of the SS version I saw in the first page I visited. Am I wrong? Is the brass color just from age? Here are the pictures I took today.

Also, after looking at this a lot today, it has been offered to me to keep as none of the heirs want anything to do with it. They can't get beyond the hatred for the Nazis, whereas I am a historian by nature, and student of human behavior and human nature, and have a lot of military history in my own past including having the option of buying General Obregon's house in Mazatlan a few years ago, the irony of which is he gave the order to execute my great grandfather by firing squad in the revolution of 1910 a few blocks from that house. Without that act, my grandfather would have never immigrated here and I would not be. See how things work out? Further, this is technically a family heirloom for these folks. Still, they don't want it. So maybe I do. I mean, the Nazis and their policies and methods turned out to not be to popular! And, they lost the war! Now we have their shit. What can I say? To the victors go the spoils? In this case, to the survivors go the relics. Do we hate on Alexander for conquering the known world? He may have killed our ancestors, but he died miserably and his army's swords would be worth a fortune right now! In fact, some of them were smelted into bronze and turned into the Colossus of Rhoads, so you see? Such is the way of church bells: Cast into cannons, and then after the war, recast back into church bells. You can still pick up pieces of the Colossus of Rhoads/Alexander's army's swords as chunks of bronze that fell out of camel caravans, along the Silk Road if you have a metal detector, as the later ruler of Rhoads, an Ottoman Sultan, declared it a resource to be traded. Not a god of their approval, therefore.... Repurposed. I digress again! I do that. As I said, a historian by nature.

Excuse the typos. I tried to edit, got lost in more rabbit hole addendums and ran out of time. I wanted to add that I don't hate the Germans or Germany, I LOVE their beer!!! My grandfather fought them in the war, and my uncle flew a flying boxcar into Normandy on D-Day. Crashed like many did, you've heard the stories, broke his leg and that was the end of the war for him. Shipped home where he ended up working in intelligence near Langley. He didn't talk about that either. Still, do I hate Hofbrau House for hosting Hitler for the Night of the long knives? NO! I LOVE their beer! They survived and I love their Oktoberfest more than any other beer in the world. What can I say? I'm a pragmatist. Maybe someday our species will out grow the desire to rape and pillage for fun and profit. Been thousands of years with not a lot of progress in that department. So.... I'll give up mine when the rest give up theirs.... Meanwhile, what is this thing worth??? (Imma go drink that Oktoberfest right now....)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: How do I clean the rust off without devaluing the blade? If it's like guns, that HAS to come off! Do I store it with a coating of gun oil? Do I do anything for the brass color? Is that a patina that needs to be left alone? I don't want to mess this up, especially since it's not mine.

Really nice original SA dagger by a fairly rare maker. This is not SS and not to be confused with the SS. This is the SA dagger. The experts here can tell you how to care for it.

The light surface rust SHOULD be an easy removal. The use of Simichrome Polish (light application and work with cross grain and avoid the inside of the motto and Tm) will remove the surface problem. You can remove deep rust pits with Simichrome, but the level of effort to remove dark pits will take away the factory cross grain polish so you have to weigh the desired results with the obvious cross grain removal. Using oil on these blades CAN darken the blade over time, so I avoid oil.

Thank you so much. Never heard of simichrome but I’ll go try to find it. Very light effort to remove. So I think I saw the cross hatch pattern you all speak of. I’m assuming that’s from a cloth wheel buffer maybe? I don’t know, but since everybody mentions that on discussions about these, I’m guessing it’s important. I’ve spent the last 2 nights reading up in these and the history of the Brown Shirts and Nazis in general. Geez. They told us who they were and how they were gonna do things way early on with general thuggery, and then the whole Long Knives thing. We should have known better, but I guess under the circumstances there wasn’t much to be done. They did it like every totalitarian regime before them, with violence. I mean, their iconography even looked like it was patterned after the Romans, which is ironic considering the ancestors of the Germanic peoples hated Rome and everything they stood for… I guess power corrupts them all in the end. Still, this is a nice dagger of what I’m gathering there was millions made? So why haven’t I seen these before? One forum on here has collections of hundreds!

Use a clean terrycloth bathe towel and do the job BY HAND, not with a wheel buffer.