SOLD - Early, Unit Marked SA Dagger Herder & Sohn with Hanger

Description

6/26/26 - This is an early-pattern SA Dagger by the desirable maker Herder & Sohn of Solingen-Ohligs, featuring the rare "Diogenes carrying a lamp" trademark. It comes complete with an excellent scabbard and leather hanger. This desirable pre-1935 example features an intact, unsharpened blade profile. The blade faces have been polished by a previous owner, which removed the factory cross-graining and left minor polishing artifacts, the steel is largely clean, showing only trace hints of surviving surface corrosion alongside a crisp, legible Alles für Deutschland motto and maker mark. The factory-plated crossguards are excellent, with a patch slight surface corrosion confined to the right reverse side. Importantly, the reverse lower crossguard is sharply stamped with the unit marking "Wf," indicating early issuance to SA Gruppe Westfalen, Westphalia, a region conveniently close to the forging centers of Solingen. The wood handle is in great shape, featuring an excellently retained enameled SA decal, a minor ding on the front top, a couple of minor surface scratches, and minor darkening of the wood below the eagle and above the decal. Furniture fits fairly well but appears to have been repositioned at some point, resulting in spacing between the handguard and wood on the left-side corner and slight warping/deterioration at the bottom front where it meets the boundary of the lower crossguard. The dagger comes housed in an excellent scabbard, showing only a minor dent at the rounded tip, a tiny paint chip on the edge opposite the hanger, and scattered minor imperfection. Completing the rig is a leather hanger in excellent shape with minor age-related wrinkling and cracking, featuring a brown leather strap paired with a black leather attachment piece, though the black leather indicates that the latter is a postwar-mated SS example.