A while ago, I found a nice, but refinished 1918 DWM pistol. The pistol is somewhat interesting, as it only has one military acceptance marking, instead of the normal set.
The pistol surfaced in Oberndorf and was placed in a box that clearly wasn't a pistol box. I couldn't make out what the box had contained and I decided to leave the pistol and box together.
Recently I discovered that one of the side businesses that DWM turned to after WW1, was the production of luxury cutlery. They did this under the name 'Ber-Ka', referring to 'Berlin-Karlsruher Industriewerke', while at the same time winking towards the Germany cutlery town Berka.
One of those cutlery sets from the 1920s was offered for sale and to my surprise the box had all the hallmarks of my 'pistol box'. Same materials, type of finishing, inlay around the edges and lock work...
I now feel better that I kept both the pistol and box together and did not discard the box. Although not a pistol box, it has a shared history with this pistol and the company that produced both of them in the past
A funny detail is that DWM/BKIW kept using their 'bombe' logo on the cutlery as well.