Yes, Bob - this photo is undoctored, unaltered, and accepted by everyone as genuine. The photo appeared much later than many of these daggers on to the scene, and clearly shows what is to 99% of the collecting world, the NSKK High Leader with silver chain, "sloppy" center scabbard fitting, and cartouche-style clip. And now that we have a named example (one with the nickel chain) bought out of the woodwork, and one with the silver chain that Gailen David found, which had been modified for easier wear, plus all of the other testimony evidence, the issue of the silver content markings begins to shrink into the background as nothing more than an genuinely interesting quirk - much like the "flaw" in the Banschutz crossguard. We don't know why it is there, but it is there nonetheless.
Maybe Gahr only made the sample chain, and then Huhnlein got angry at them and gave the chains to another factory to reproduce for him. Maybe HIS NSKK High Leader (the one he is wearing, which appears to have a similar cartouche style suspension clip) was the original made by Gahr, and he sent his off to be reproduced so he could award "attaboy" awards to his friends for some last-minute road race. We will probably never know why the chains ended up being produced the way they were produced. I'm okay with that. I am not proposing any of these as serious theories, because I lack evidence of them. But they are all logically possible, and given the mounting evidence in support of these being real daggers, we are forced to accept that something strange happened - an event, the details of which, may be forever lost in time.
