Fake, repro or genuine......?

I mentioned in the thread on the SS Totenkopf ring that I used to collect Third Reich daggers. I also mentioned that I no longer collect them, nor have any in my collection.

There are so many reproductions and fakes around today that collecting them is a real minefield. The reason that I stopped collecting them was because of a German Kriegsmarine (navy) officers dagger that I bought. I'll explain....

I found a beautiful, mint condition navy dagger, complete with its bullion knot and hanging straps and belt, made by F.W.Höller of Solingen. The dagger was mint and complete, as all of those that I had were. However, a while later I saw another couple of them for sale, in the same condition and also complete. It transpired that they were made from original wartime parts, but assembled much, much later.
That had me thinking, what is a fake or a repro? The dagger was genuine in that the parts were made by Höller during the war, but was never assembled nor worn by any officer at that time.
It was not a fake as such, nor was it a reproduction, but at the same time it was in the truest sense not genuine either.
That sowed so much doubt in my mind that I sold all mine, and it is a question that I still cannot answer some 40 years later. Forgetting the politics and connections, would you have been happy owning it, or would you too have passed it on?
The above question obviously applies to any 'antique' not just the daggers in question.

As one can see, they are rather beautiful daggers....


With apologies for posting something with a swastika on, I hope no one is offended.

 

You're right. It's beautiful workmanship. It's not 100% genuine, but not a fake either. It's closer to what antiquers call NOS - New, Old Stock. The pieces are old, but it was sitting on a factory closet shelf for decades after manufacture.

 

My mom’s husband was a WWII military collector and had a number of Nazi-era pieces. Personally, I always found them unsettling to look at. At the same time, I don’t believe he was glorifying them or what they represented.

So I have mixed feelings. I could never personally own items like that, but I do understand and respect serious collectors who preserve artifacts from this very dark period of history for historical reasons rather than admiration.

 

With objects made before mass production, the assemblage of parts with different origins might be called a "marriage" or "pastiche", with the implication that the resulting piece would not be considered genuine.

But in this instance, the object is composed of parts that were manufactured to be identical and interchangeable. It is, in a sense, a restoration - reuniting parts with the same origin that were intended to be an assemblage.

I like evelyb's framing it as "New, Old Stock".

The only problematic possibility that I can see is if such an assemblage was being represented as an association piece - having been owned or used by some important individual. That would make it a deceptive fake.