As suggested by several folks, we are adding this page to gather what information we can about edged items of unknown origin or backgrounds. We will print what information we do have on them and any theories anyone may have right here on this page. Hit me with your best shot to stimulate the thought process.
Actually it is a scabbard this time around.
A $50.00 REWARD will be paid to anyone who DOCUMENTS the location (street address) of the B.A. Inc. M7 Scabbard makers, owners or partners, year it opened, final disposition of the company, who the scabbards were made for and when, or any other pertinent information leading to their discovery.
B.A. Inc. Marked M7 Scabbards
In a recent post to a bulletin board a discussion was initiated on a relatively recently discovered scabbard marking. The scabbard is pictured below with several close-ups to show the markings. In hopes to track this down I have copied the question posed by our friend Gary Cunningham:
"I just purchased one of these scabbards, marked exactly as Brett stated, and am posting a poor photo here in hopes that this will jog someone’s memory.
BA Inc. is Beckwith-Arden Inc of Watertown, Mass. Edwin L Beckwith (at the time from Brookline Mass) patented a couple of scabbards circa 1965 and assigned the patent to Beckwith-Arden. This is assumed to be the same Edwin L Beckwith (of Brookline) who first filed a scabbard patent (for what was to become the M3 scabbard) in 1940.
The Defense Acceptance Stamp (DAS) is somewhat unusual with the number underneath. I have seen a number of other items and scabbards marked with the stamp, but not the number. This same stamp appears on the M-1917 scabbard, also by Beckwith-Arden, that has appeared on the market recently. Several of the M-1917 and M7 scabbards have appeared very recently - does anyone know where they are coming from? I don't recall seeing any of these until just a few months ago, and there were 4 or 5 on ebay in the last month!"
So as we can see there are scabbards that are just appearing on the scene. How can that be?? Well it could be that they were just recently imported back into the country possibly given out as aid to another country, possibly just released by the DRMO after years of untouched storage, or possibly newly made scabbards just for the collectors market. I don’t have a clue so I place this here as a question to all. Someone out there knows where these scabbards came from, how about letting us know too??
Click on the Thumbnail to see the full size picture.