Hand and a Half Sword

[ulfberth]

Good observation Casey, the cut out shapes on the guard shells on Cornelistrump's example are the same shape as the pommel of the sword in the Wallace Collection, so either it was born like this or as Philip pointed out its a later upgrade.
Indeed there never were guard shells in your sword rings because these are fixed in the slits or grooves and your's does not have any grooves . On swords/rapiers that have lost these scales you can clearly see the grooves were the shells were fitted. When we look at the design of your swords crossguard we can see the swung or shape of the Pappenheimer style guard , in my opinion your sword is an earlier version of the one in the Wallace Collection that later developed further upgrading it with guard shells and some more later as we all know developed further to the Pappenheimer rapier, interesting is that there are also Pappenheimer hand and a half swords. Below an example of the grooves in a guard ring that has lost a shell and some Pappenheimer guards to compare the style and shape and a hand and a half sword .