With the poorly stamped lettering, and incomplete, I think Marius is right in his initial observation, and the 'C' may be a broken or poorly stamped letter. These stamps degraded over time and use and often caused incomplete or poorly placed markings.
It seems much like the case with minted coins where flaws and errors are the root of high value in many cases.
The notion of SOLLING seems right. I have seen varied spellings of Solingen, and even in Solingen itself, foreign workers in shops had obvious misgivings with language.
|