Here’s an army I just added to the collection. Initial production Puma with brass based fittings & slant grip. Dagger has the early small variation maker mark and a rare crossguard you very seldom see.

Very nice item!Love the feathers on the eagle!

Rich
Thanks - how’s life in Ski country? Have not heard from you in a good while? Where you been hiding?

Tom,
Thats a great example of a hard to find crossguard variation. One thing I have noticed in common on all the examples I have seen is the almost vertical hand enhancing to the wing feathering.
You can also find these early small Puma logo marked army daggers with E-Pack 2nd fittings although the example above would have pre-dated this later config.
Wittmann shows this particular crossguard on page 259 on an early Wusthof and states that it resembles the early SMF crossguard !. I think he must have been having a bad day as they are not even close.
It is more in keeping with the early Klaas crossguard although there are major differences, enough in my opinion to consider it unique, possibly Puma's own initial production run?.
These crossguards have been found on early army daggers by Puma, Voos, Wusthof and Krebs, it would be interesting to see if anybody else has one on a dagger by other makers!.

Great addition to an already envious collection Tom, that one has everything including condition. Very nice.

Tom,
it is a beautiful dagger!
I have never seen this configuration before.
Congratulation.

Janos

Nice, Tom, and I see that it is up on your web site.

What an amazing collection of Army daggers.

John

Yes Tom has some beautiful stuff on his site.

I bought one of these in this exact configuration about 5 years ago, I had a hard time believing the crossguard was good because I had never seen one with so much hand enhancing, if I remember rightly I sent pictures to Denny to check it out.
It's a lovely dagger with a great grip and superb blade. A great addition to your already great collection.

Gary

Thanks very much guys – Jon regarding your comment about all of these having the almost vertical enhancing to the wing feathers – It reminds of the pack scabbard bands that have a unique enhancement to them no doubt all done by the same artist/engraver I suspect the same situation here whoever made these guards had one chiseler who enhanced these guards. Now in the case of Pack they were such a big firm they probably had many but the work of one of these guys is unmistakable.

Here is a pic of the bands I am talking about these are two different daggers but I believe finished by the same artist.Also note the similarities in the hand work on the crossguards.