A scheitholt with no first fret

I recently acquired a scheitholt, which I was amazed to find on Craigslist under musical instruments, as that category is 99.9% guitars, amps and modern instruments. I drove most of the way to San Diego to pick it up. It had been bought at an auction outside Philadelphia by the seller's brother some years back and he knew nothing else about it.

I'm not seeing how to upload pictures or I'd do that. Someone please advise me.

The really curious thing about it is that there is no first fret - and I don't mean it fell out, there is no space for it on the fretboard, which begins with the typical close spacing of the 2nd and 3rd fret. Above those is just the nut for the strings. Apparently, one could play the Ionian scale from 3 through 10, but not the notes leading up to the tonic at 3. (This would make more sense if you could see the picture!)

Has this fret arrangement ever been seen on an older dulcimer family instrument? Or is this example perhaps the result of a brand new instrument builder who simply made a mistake and left out a fret? I've never noticed another such arrangement on any old instruments!

I have another odd instrument I'd like to post about but will wait until I learn how to post pictures. 

I swear I don't see an 'upload picture' button anywhere on this New Discussion page and I don't think it's the "insert/edit link" icon or anything up in that part of the window. A couple pictures would indeed be worth a thousand words of description!!