Where It All Started

[Larry C]

Hi Gents,, I wanted to bring this thread back up to the top and see if anyone else had any "First time stories" of their first dagger they acquired. My first Vision was back in high school as someone brought an SA dagger to school in a history class. ( God forbid now anyone even bringing a nail clipper to school ) The appearance of the dagger caught my eye and my friend said is grandfather was in the Luftwaffe as he also had his leather flight helmet with googles. There was apossibility of course that as the SA was slowly being used up in other branches of service,, it makes sense also that some went into the Luftwaffe.......anyway.. time had passed and I saw an SA dagger like my friends at a local Flea market and the ladie said it was a repro and I bought it for $70. It looked like my friends dagger so i wanted to have. Time went by and i wore at halloween parties. One day at my job way back when at a print shop ,, we started printing Tom Wittmanns catalog books the paper back kind. I started reading them and the more I read it the more things popped into my head. I later checked out my dagger again. It was an EP&S dagger "Ernst Pack" as I read on,, I noticed a little letter "B" on the lower crossguard. I read further describing the shape of the grip for this maker..........MY GOD ITS REAL!!!!!!,, I called Tom and had the pleasure of going to his home to where i almost had a heart attrach seeing what he had,, he told me my dagger was good! I took down the dagger for further inspection and the guards were internally marked with an "S" inside of a horse shoe crest.. typical Pack guards. I wanted to talk my find for years but no one wanted to talk about it with me,, I perused Wittmanns site and saw a link for a dagger website GDC. I joined under the name of( Siegfried B) as this was the type of dagger I had as the logo was the Siegfried hammer smith,, and the "B" was the gruppe mark. My first dagger to which I still have to this day. Im very happy to be here now and serve under the capacity I was entrusted with.
Does anyone else have a story or a first time find story? Regards Larry