Thanks for the info. I did check with the owner of the gun and he told me he has letter from a luger expert named Costanza who actually looked at the luger and wrote a letter saying he thought the markings were legit. I will try to get a copy of the letter and post.
Thanks again for your help

That would be very interesting looking forward to it.

I would vote it's real. Usually people do NOT use gun in this nice condition as raw material to create fake by adding a property mark of a little known organization. Adding one or two "matching" magazines will be much more effective. So the mark is probably genuine. Just an opinion.

Letter from Costanzo

Wow. What a cool one to pop up. Learn something new everyday.

The marking is probably legitimate for the reasons already discussed. However the markings were not stamped as stated by Sam, they are obviously pantographed. That is a great letter to keep with the gun. Sam Costanzo was an outstanding Luger researcher. He didn't get everything right, but what he did get right - and documented - is monumental.

I was thinking of this thread while folding the laundry (Guhg!), and made a special trip back here to post this.
I am positive this is a legitimate marking, and was 90% sure from the original post. This thread should serve as a lesson that, despite all of our best intentions, not everyone here knows everything there is to know about these pistols. I think that this board, and Jan's board, are obviously the two de facto best resources for Luger research on the Internet, and therefor globally, BUT, here's the caveat, there is a lot of opinion, and opinion can never be allowed to displace facts.
I don't want anyone to take this as a personal attack, that is far from my intent, and I apologize in advance if it is perceived that way, but if the OP had listened to the first couple of posts, or rather if his friend had, he may have sold the Luger for a song thinking it a mucked up, or forged piece, relegated it to a "shooter", parted it out, or done something really awful like have it engraved or nickel plated!
As has been said so eloquently by others before, information from the Internet is worth EXACTLY what you pay for it. Everyone should always USE MULTIPLE SOURCES TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

Thanks for everyone's help. It is really appreciated.

Hello,

I agree with Ron, the "SA der NSDAP" marking is legit and you can find a similar marking as example on the stock of KKW training rifles from the Sturmabteilung (SA).

But there doesn't have to be a connection to the Navy, as the SA-Gruppe Nordsee covers a larger area and they had various branch of service.

In the SA-Gruppe Nordsee are the following Brigade:
Brigade 62 (Unterweser)
Brigade 63 (Ostfriesland)
Brigade 64 (Osnabrück)
Brigade 162 (Minden)
Brigade Marine 2 (Navy 2)

In the SA-Brigade Marine 2 are the following Standarten:
Standarte Marine 15 located in Bremen
Standarte Marine 89 located in Bremerhaven
Standarte Marine 116 located in Wilhelmshaven

Even without Kriegsmarine connection, because of the style I could imagine a armorer of the Naval Station in Wilhelmshaven marked this Pistole 08 for the SA to distinguish them from Navy issue. Maybe the pistol was property of the SA-Brigade Marine 2 and if they have together a maneuver, they would want to prevent an inadvertent exchange with such a marking.

Regards,
Stephan

Made this thread a "Sticky" for the good reference material here as well as the discussion.

The marking would be more believable if the pistol was a banner commercial. The "Party" was required to source arms on the commercial market. In 1938 all government arms resources were be used to fulfill rearmament.

I don't like the lettering at all. It doesn't appear to look pantograph to me at all under higher magnification. The ends of the letters look rounded like being done on a milling machine. Shouldn't pantograph letters be squared off at their ends? Look's like little swirling marks thru the length of the letters caused from a milling bit.

Rounded ends and little swirling marks are signs of pantograph use as opposed to stamping. So the markings look just like many hundreds of other 1920-30 timeframe German unit markings.

A pantograph is just a duplicating device, it can have several options for actually marking, from a pen or pencil, to a stylus, the Germans appear to have used something similar to a spinning dremel tool bit(think of the old style dentist drill)- which of course is why it looks like milling. I guess you could think of it as a tiny milling machine.:thumbup:

Thx Don
for clearing this up for me. I have thought it was more like a cutting tool that scrachted into the metal. Like what you see done on trophies. I didn’t realize that they were using power tools to do the cutting in this process at this time.
Thx.

Jeffrey