Collecting Soviet Dirks - Considerations?

[AllThingsCCCP]

Originally Posted by Trigger

I have collected daggers a while, and there are some points to be aware of.

Unless you have 100% faith in the seller, stay away from embellished daggers and socalled admirals daggers. Most of these are fake or altered originals.

I also (on a personal choice) stay away from all daggers marked from the maker BULAT as most of these are made for the souvenir marked post 1991. Dagger production after the 1970's was very limited, so to be "safe" stick to daggers dated 1958 or earlier...

Also daggers engraved on the blade with CCCP or a cyrillic C in front of a number are souvenirs and not issued daggers.

Excellent advice! Thank you very much. I like to collect things that were made before 1953 and plan to do so with the dirks as well.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on Soviet dirks right now. I bought the newly published book "Soviet Dirks" in Russian and English translated from Russian. It isn't a huge help, but it is useful.