Police Luger DWM

[Don M]

Originally Posted by postino

Don, for my sake (and Otto's), would you say an intact Walther Sicherung adds to the value of a police Luger??? Or as Giualfi maintains, does it detract from the value???

Rich, that is very difficult to say because it depends on the collector. I try to answer such questions from the point of view of the "average collector" and I suspect he doesn't much care! The fact that a Luger rig with a supposedly original intact Walther safety has languished for many months on GunBroker with a minimum bid set at $5,500 is proof that it is not a highly sought-after feature. If an intact safety is believed to be original and that it somehow escaped the deactivation order, it might add a few hundred dollars to the value because of its rarity; however, the buyer would have to have some knowledge of the history of these devices to be willing to pay this premium.

My concern with the idea of "restoring" a police Luger by replacing a deactivated safety with an intact one is that it falsifies the history of the pistol. If I suspected that had happened, I wouldn't buy the gun at all. However, I try to not be "average."