opinions on an AE on Gunbroker

[Ron Wood]

A nice looking quite early American Eagle. It almost certainly is a restoration, or at a minimum a "touch up". The grips may not be original to the gun and definitely have been re-checkered...they are ill fitting (too much frame showing around the grips) and there are run-together lines on the checkering. For the most part, the blueing looks pretty good, but some of the parts that should be fire blued look rust blued. These early guns generally do not exhibit a halo around the barrel serial number...something to do with the metallurgy and the fact that the number is stamped on the barrel flange rather than further out on the straight section. However, in this case, I would say that the lack of a halo is the result of restoration rather than metallurgy.

The early American Eagle Lugers from around serial number 2021 (a hundred numbers lower than this one) to around 2199 have the distinctive "Swiss cross" barrel proof as this one does. It is only 15 numbers away from an example that I own, so I have a pretty good basis for comparison.

Your observation that it is "too good" is valid in my opinion.