SS luger on gunbroker

[Herb]

The thing that impressed me about the sellers letter is his feeling towards the so-called 'experts' and their opinions. I have had a similar experience with an 'expert' that I'll relate here. In the early part of 1987 I was in southern Germany on business and a friend who was with me knew of a militaria shop in Penzberg not far south of Munich where we were at the time. This shop owner advertised in an American magazine that he had authentic militaria, actually somewhat rare in Germany because of the swastika emblems being illegal since the end of the war. We went there and introduced ourselves and were taken down the street to a doorway that led into an underground storage section below street level. This guy had all kinds of stuff down there, it was unbelievable! While my friend was negotiating a price on something I was nosing around looking in boxes and such when I came across a box with dress daggers in it. Being a collector of Nazi dress daggers, at the time, I was really excited. I pawed thru them, carefully, and came across a 1936 chained SS officer's dagger in like new condition, my hands were shaking just holding it and admiring it and it was the only one I had seen outside of pictures and it was perfect. Well, I bought it to make the story a little shorter. After I got back home I began to wonder about the excellant condition of the dagger. I sent it to Ltc Thomas Johnson (ret) for examination, as he is supposedly the leading authority on Third Reich edged weapons. $125 later he sends it back with his short letter telling me it's a fake. This really gets me excited as I had paid over $1,000 for this thing. I decide to write to the shop owner in Penzberg and see if he has any info on it. In April of 87 I get a letter back from him with the following information. "As to the former owner of the SS-Leader's chained dagger that you purchased here I can advise you of the following dates: Karl Fritz, Sturmbahnnfuhrer in the staff of the SS-section Alpenland, SS-Membership number: 356862. In WW1 Karl Fritz was a 1st lieutenant. I hope that this can be of assistance to you." The name was on a tag in the tunic (I had seen the complete uniform when I was there) and he had found the other info on an SS-seniority list that he had. Now armed with this information I wrote to the Mission in Berlin Germany, specifically the Berlin Document Center where the records of Nazi's were stored. I knew this as I had been stationed at the 766th MID in Berling in the early 70's and had on occasion used this service. I recieved an answer from the director of the BDC. Along with it he had photocopied the entire military file on Karl Fritz, who in fact did exist and did have the serial number given to me and enclosed it with his letter. It had official documentation in it up until April 1944 then nothing folowing that. Ok, now I have official documentation that the SS officer existed, that the dagger did in fact go with the uniform that the shop owner had and had sent the information to me. Now, do I have an SS dagger that a real SS officer had purchased as a fake sometime prior to 1944 or do I have an authentic SS dagger contrary to what the expert thinks? If this dagger is a fake it is the best one I have ever seen, and I have seen several of them since then, I actually own one of them. The worksmanship if of a jewell like quality, this is no cheap stamped out Indian or Spanish repo. I put this here to point out that the 'experts' can only go by what they have themselves seen and feel is correct, but sometimes if it seems too good to be true, it just might not be.