A Vor seal dagger was a dagger that contained, in the hilt, the seal of one of the Barrayaran District Counts. All sixty counts on Barrayar had a seal, and all the countly families had at least one seal dagger. The standard use of the seal in a dagger was to indicate the provenance of a message – the sender would nick a finger of a hand, then smear the blood on the seal and press the seal onto the message. Ivan discovered a box of sixty seal daggers (one for each countly family) in a bunker of Occupation loot; he estimated it to be worth six to ten million Barrayaran marks or Betan dollars.