Thaks Paul. Collecting non German daggers was particularly fun at the beginning. Most dealers at the shows did not know what they were and they were priced quite low. It was not unusual for me to go to one of the German shows and come back with 10 to 20 good daggers. This was before anyone knew what they were except Kurt Glemser and Bob Berger. At that time I was living in Poland. when I returned to the States in 2000, I found this web site, German Daggers, and Bob and I met here as we were both collecting non German daggers. Bob then started the worlddaggers web site and I helped build it with the 300 daggers I had brought back. I did the non German daggers and bob did the German daggers. We since went through three web hosters.
Most of the non German daggers have examples built by 'German firms. They bring the highest prices, of course. The quality is noticeably better.
As far as knowledge goes. There are now plenty of sources out there. Pretty much every country has a collector who has published a good book on their daggers with much more depth than we ever had.
I believe at this time most of the original daggers are in collections. I have over 20 Danish daggers and intend to publish them soon. I also have the Italian, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian daggers among others that I keep.
