15.5 inch brass blade knife with bronze handle

[haggler]

Our son recently gave us this knife that he found while re-plumbing an old house here in Missouri. We've never seen one quite like it and can't find any info on it. We're hoping someone out there might shine some light on it for us.
The piece is really heavy and has markings with numbers on the handle. The weight is one pound, 11 ounces. The blade is solid brass (and very sharp) the handle seems to be bronze. The length of the blade is approximately eight inches.
The numbers are 120 with two diamond shaped marks between the 1 and 2. The top diamond is smaller than the second diamond. It looks as if there might be a line below the zero.
We only recently found this site but check it out constantly. It's the new favorite!
We do a lot of trading as we're both old hagglers and had an offer on it but didn't want to part with it, especially since the offer was so good. We'd really appreciate any help ya'll can give us!
Thanks, Haggler

 

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[DCMatt]

Search janbiya or Yemeni dagger.


Since yours is all brass I suspect it is/was a tourist piece brought back for use as a letter opener, but it is impossible to know without having in hand.


It certainly looks cool! Early 20th C?

 

[haggler]

Thank you for replying, We do appreciate the input. I wondered if it might be a tourist item as well. The weight of it made me wonder about it's use, but letter opener would certainly work. The info helps in gives us a starting point. Thank You, DCMatt.