Two trench knives - authentic?

[herring]

Hello All,

Here are two trench knives - one from 1st and one from 2nd ww. I would like to know your opinions, if they look OK. In case of 1ww knife the blade looks very good, maybe too new? In case of 2ww knife I was told , that it might be a copy. I would verify these opinions with members of this forum.

Here is 1ww:










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and here is 2nd ww:








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regards
herring

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Herring, sorry I would not buy either of these two knives.

As you correctly say there is no real age to the "WW1" knife and the supposed wear to "WW2" knife is very artificial and appears to have been done with sandpaper.

Cheers, Ade.

[sb98]

I think the Demag WWI knife is ok. I have a few WWI knives in the same condition.

The WWII knife itself looks alright but I agree with Ade., the scratches on the scabbard are strange and the finish on the grips looks unatural. Maybe it's real but it looks "messed with" and I would pass on that one.

[ErichK]

I think your WW1 is 100%. The grips on the second at a minimum have been sanded and refinished, I'd not want it in my collection.
Erich

[Shenkursk]

There is not a thing in the world wrong with your WWI DEMAG knife. This is most likely out of the big trench knife lot that surfaced in 1996 or 1997. One of the traditional US pocket knife wholesalers found a bundle of these overseas. They wouldn't say where, but my guess is Turkey. The were $24.99 each, or 12.99 each if you bought in quantity. I tried VERY hard to buy them all, but they refused on account of "fairness". In the end, I was able to scoop up 350-400 out of their original stash of 2000 by having friends and relatives call up and each buy the max allotment that they would sell to one person. As you might imagine, they were gone in just a few days.

The knives arrived in plastic bags covered in some sort of preservative grease. We bought several gallons of mineral spirits, and went to work on them. There were DEMAG knives, also several patterns of ERN, etc. about 4 basic WWI German trench knives in all. You could not tell one from the other until they were cleaned up! Once clean, they came in two basic flavors: absolutely brilliant mint condition, or 'prison shiv'. Fortunately, 95% were mint and only 5% were 'shivs' which we pitched (kept the scabbards, of course.)

I thought that this would completely RUIN the trench knife market, but as it turned out the demand still greatly outweighed the supply. We sold them for $75-$90 or so, depending on the pattern, and they were gone over the course of a couple of catalogs. They still pop up at shows - I bought one at SOS. When you see them in this condition, it is almost a guarantee that they are from this lot.

Still wish we could have bought the lot of them, but our small part in that deal was still fun (and profitable) enough!

Remember - just because an item is in good condition does not necessarily mean that it is 'bad.'

The most commonly reproduced WWI German trench knives are the DEMAG 'crank handle' bayonet / trench knife and the Gottleib Hammesfahr knife with 'coffin' shaped grips. The latter is fairly easy to tell if you have handled enough originals - the grips are a bit too thick, and normally the scabbard has an incorrect closure snap.

As for your WWII knife, that is outside my area so I will leave that to more informed members.

[sb98]

Hey Jeff,

That's interesting info. I have one of the mint Demags, I paid a little more than $24.99 too . Who was selling these when they first got dicovered?