Krieghoff S-Code Question...

Hello Ed,


The company Hermann Ritzmann & Sons (HRS) made a brown plastic grip with very fine checkering and a narrow border all around the grips for Krieghoff. Krieghoff also used a coarse checkered brown plastic grips made by others. Early Krieghoffs used wooden grips, then the two types of brown plastic grips, and finally went to black plastic grips around 1937.


R. Gibson covers this well on pages 42-51 in his " The Krieghoff Parabellum ", if you have access to this book.


The Ritzmann grips have the emblem "HRS" molded inside, the number "8964" molded, and threaded holes for the grip screws (similar to BW grip panels). R.Gibson says the reason for "8964" is not known.


The early Military S-Codes ran from 1-2500. The middle S-Codes ran from 2000-3000 and the late S-Codes ran from 2100-4000.


Gibson indicates the Ritzmann grips did not appear until the middle of the middel S-Code run...


Thus my concern for an early S-Code with serial nubmer XXX with the Ritzmann grips.


Asking price of the gun is in the mid $3K's...thus my "little red flag" popping up...