Help with Dagger

[hftiii]

My father purchased this dagger in the early 1970s and it recently passed to me. I'm not sure of its originality and I don't believe he was either. Based upon what little I know (I'm not a collector of daggers) the RZM looks cheaply done, and I'm not sure about the inscription either. Expert op[inions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Tom

[Wagriff]

I would worry more about the way the sheath throat is not fitting.

[Larry C]

Hi Tom .... I would include with what Wagriff has stated of the lower guard being a poor fit to the scabbard ...the dagger appears to be assembled with a mixture of different producer fittings. You can see why even the grip fits so poorly to the lower cross guard.

RZM7/66 is a Carl Eickhorn contract number for mid to late period production daggers. Your dagger has early to late period ..and the cross guards are questionable from what I'm seeing on my tablet.

The dagger appears to have been postwar assembled to almost recently. Give a look through some of the threads in this SAdagger forum.

Thanks for posting your counts to teach others in authenticity.

Regards Larry

[hftiii]

Thank you Wagriff and Larry. Larry, I do remember my dad saying it is a "parts dagger". Given that, I am curious about the authenticity of the mismatched parts? Does the RZM and inscription look legitimate, or is likely that the blade is a reproduction? I appreciate your insight!

Tom

[Wagriff]

The blade looks good. It just didn't start life being put together with these particular parts, is all. "Parts dagger" can have several meanings. At the war's end, the dagger factories had bins of parts and many a dagger was thrown together using them. They weren't matched and fit together as the real deals had been, but most GI's only wanted "A Nazi Dagger" to bring home and didn't give a hoot anyway and so they ended up over here by the piles. "Came home with my father in 1945" didn't always mean that it came off a German's Belt... As the original parts began to dry up and run out, then came the real Frankensteins. They would put together pieces that did not belong at all with each other and even worse-they began Making totally phony parts when they couldn't find something that would fit together onto the other conglomerates. Your dagger belongs in the in between category. Genuine parts that don't all belong together -but assembled haphazardly well after the war's end.

[hftiii]

Thanks for the Information William!

Tom