End of production, or near end of production, dress daggers omitted nickel plated blades. Daggers had Kriegsmetall hilt fittings. Anything they could do to try and conserve increasingly scarce metal alloys was done to keep non Wehrmacht (military) production going. By 1942 some makers of bayonets for the Wehrmacht, that had used Bakelite plastic grips previously, had to revert to wood grips to enable them to continue to make bayonets. Is there a connection? That is where I would be looking myself. FP
