How Badly did I get taken? PIX Added
 

I wanted a luger for some time now and went to the Lakeland FL show today and bought a 1916 dwm "miixmaster" for 650. It was at 750, and I figured to get ripped off for 650 is better than 750 or the 1250 one I was considering.

I know, dumb move without any knowledge of lugers, but I wanted to get started.....
So, how do I tell how bad the pistol is.
I have quite a bit of familiarity with WWII USGI weapons, and a bit with the P38 cyq....

Any suggestions on how to start to evaluate the gun?

It is stamped 1916 on top, with the DWM logo, and 9911 S/N most parts have an 11 on them, the mag is wooden with 9911 scribed in by hand....the top toggle is maked 71 ...


Any help appreciated,

Andy:confused:

There is no need for a home pregnancy test, to tell the truth I bet we all started about there, and like a bad hair cut needs a few days to grow out, in a few years you'll wish you had bought more a $650....but pictures will help us help you, how is the bore? and now remember to buy books next time instead of guns, its hard to find a good shooter for much less.

Thanks for the reply, and lack of flame. Books are a better buy, but money doesn't burn a hole in your pocket for books.....

In the last 4 hours I have read a bit of this forum and viewed Johhn Dunkle's 1916 Imperial DWM photos in the gallery, very very nice piece.

Question on operation:
When I pull up the toggle and **** the "bolt hammer" it will stay in this position without returning to the closed-locked position on it's own. I can easily push it down, and when I fully retract and release it locks home fine.

Also, is it safe to fire without the hold open installed?

I spent some time searching for the hammer, it took a while to figure out the Luger is quite different from most pistols I have taken apart. :-)

The finish is very good, probably all reblued. I think the proofs should be after blue originally?

9911 on side of receiver and 9911 with a cursive lower case g under it.

Differences I have to John's pistol:

Black Plastic grips
No Hold Open - groove machined for it but it's not there, should have it I think
Reblued barrel inside and out
Rebarreled - no alignment mark on barrel, only receiver
Wooden mag with 9911 scribed on edge - some stamp mark on wood
Ejector says NbnEHb - Russian characters?
Bolt is 93
top toggle assembly is 70 not 71
4 correct proofs on receiver as shown on this forum for DWM
All other parts 11

I will take some pictures and post

Seems like a mixed -redone 1916 Luger, Bore is good but blued, action seems fine.

You can operate the guns safely without a hold open device, all things being safe and in good running condition, about $50 should get you one, BUT what?? you got a Russian extractor (I think thats what you meant), you may have a diamond here, we will need pictures, this could be a gem of a part...

Police Luger is right. The exctractor, if in fact, a genuine Russian extractor, may be worth almost as much as you paid fo the gun.

I agree with PL, the gun should be safe to shoot. I have had several Lugers that would "pause" if brought to the "cocked" position... sometimes if lubricated properly, they will stop doing this, but you will never see this happen during firing... only when slowly manually cocking it.

The gun is definitely a mix-master parts gun. If you post photos of the individual parts that show any stamps on them some members may be able to identify their individual pedigree.

The black plastic grips, may in fact be bakelite, (or they could be just black plastic reproductions), but if genuine bakelite and in good condition, they could be worth as much as 20% of what you paid...

We shall wait for the photos. The photo tutorial is at the top of the Site Help and Feedback forum.

Welcome to the Lugerforum.

I am awake now, and I understand you question better, you can pull the toggle (bolt hammer is incorrect term) part way up and it will hold, and with a final snap it will lock into battery, this is OK...

The extractor is Bulgarian, not Russian. Still scarce, but not as rare as a Russian extractor.

Andy,

I am looking for a Bulgarian extractor. I will trade you a "geladen" extractor & a holdopen with spring for your Bulgarian extractor, or buy it for $100.
Hugh

Many thanks for the replies and info.

I took it to work, where my good dig camera was, and didn't get tiime to take photos or even read this thread til now. I left the luger at work, so no pics til tomorrow, sorry.
I will take pictures of the parts, particularly the extractor writing.

Hugh, I appreciate the offer, ..I will let you know when I learn more about the luger, especially the part that explains how to remove the extractor.

I am still amazed studying the operation and design. This is the first Luger I have held for more than 5 seconds. I first thought I got ripped off when I figured out how to remove the barrel assembly, and couldn't find the hammer !!! "This thing is nothing like the .45" I thought.

PL: By bolt hammer I meant the little spring loaded part that hits the firing pin. It seems the hammer is built in to the bolt. The trigger just releases this little hammer in the bolt. Seeing as I still don't know jack about the Luger, odds are I am probably wrong.

The toggle I think is the thing with the two "lifesavers" on either side that hinges when you pull up to operate the action? When I pullup the toggle, it stays up after the little "click".
Here are the pics, I have more if needed, sorry for the large size of some.

http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/1916_16.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/1916_13.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/1916_6.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/1916_10.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/1916_11.jpg

1. No part "hits" the firing pin, held under tension by the sear bar when cocked, the firing pin will travel forward and hit the primer when released. It is the trigger that by means of a lever, that slides the sear bar off the firing pin allowing it to move forward
2. The toggle unit has a right and left side knob, not lifesaver, that give you a gripping area to **** the gun, staying up a little if opened slowly is the norm.....but having not seen or handled your gun, perhaps you should seek out someone in your area more familiar with the gun and help you through it

Pictures added above

Looks like a very nice clip and with pictures of other siide and bottom would help here, but looks to be in the $125 range due to such nice condition, grips need a better look at...what color are they, looks a bit red to me and may just turn out to be better then expected, extractor is right on and needs to go on ebay for best price, simply put a little down ward pressure on the extractor top, on side take a small pin punch and drift out, may need to turn on side on a soft wood working block and drift out that way....you have got a diamond here, and what proof marks are on the inside of the grips, thanks for pic.

Thanks for the look at the pictures, I really appreciate an informed opinion.

The Mag:

The pictured side above indicates the condition of the other sides and edges. I will take more pics. The entire clip has no signs of pitting, rust or gouges. The follower is machined and is plated (Nickel?) The spring is clean and shiny, the checkered thumb slide button has some small signs of rust. The inside looks clean and shiny - not polished clean, but well kept over years. 9911 is lightly etched by hand with possibly one of those vibrating scribe tools. The wooden plug is in very good shape, and has a stamp mark on the bottom surface towards the end with the pin. It looks very similar to the first (most rearward) stamp on the side of the receiver. The crown has two "tufts" and the tilde ~ under it are almost the same, but the symbol under the tilde looks more like a C with a trapezoid on the bottom. I know it's hard to explain, but I can only see it well with a 10X loupe, I will try to photograph it but I doubt it will come clear...The stamp is the same size as the ones on the receiver.

The Grips:

They are black - almost a glossy black. The outer outer rim/edge around the checkering is smooth and glossy, but seems crudely hand-molded.
They are not a fine plastic mold as one would see made today. There is also a threaded counterbore in each grip, about 3/16" deep and 3/8" diameter on the inside (see picture) . Like something is supposed to thread into these holes?
I can't find anything that looks like a stamp or proof mark. They seem very sturdy, with many sanded areas around the edges and flat inside.

There is a small chip (1/8") on the inside of the right hand grip that leads me to think Bakelight. It looks is a "true" chip, like a chip made on a rock, it is jagged and rough, not what I would expect from plastic.

The Extractor:

The extractor is Russian?
This may be good news. Is there any web info on these?

Thanks again for the insight, this is very interesting and fun. This may turn out to be a heck of a parts gun. I set out to find a WWII Nazi marked decent condition P -08 Luger, and settled for this due to price and knowing I didn't know enough to make a "real", informed, Luger purchase.

I wonder if the sum of these possibly valuable parts and the rest of the gun could be worth a good condition original WWII Luger?, or do I hope for way too much.
I will take detailed pics of the mag, grips and extractor tomorrow.

Thanks,

Andy

You really need a WW2 era collector to make a call on the grips, I can only caution you that they may be worth a lot more then I can appraise them at, not an area I deal in, and the extractor is way out of anything I have ever worked with, take your time with it, you got a real dandy there, and if you eBay it, open up your sales to Europen countrys, do not limit it to US sales only......I wish you the best and let me know if I can help!

Andy,
I do not understand why you are asking again; "The extractor is Russian?" The extractor is not Russian, it is Bulgarian. A Russian extractor is quite rare and worth a fair amount of money. Your Bulgarian extractor is also not common and may be worth nearly 1/3 of what you paid for the whole gun, but it isn't Russian.
You have done well on your first Luger purchase. Enjoy it for what it is.

Ron,
you have me confused by calling this a Bulgarian extractor and not a Russian extractor. While Russian characters are different from Bugarian characters, I always thought that the Germans didn't realise it either that the characters were different, so they used the same characters on the Russian extractors as they used on the Bulgarian extractors.

Wait a minute...I just looked at two extactors that I thought were Russian/Bugarian and the characters are different from Andys picture of his extractor. My extractors look something like a reverse '3', 'AP', reverse 'R', an 'unknown' symbol and a weird looking small 'b' character (just like Andys small, weird 'b'). But still, both my extractors are different from Andy's. So which is the Russian and which is the Bugarian?

I started collecting extrators once and thought that there were a few different ones
(1) the turkish extractor,
(2) the Portugese "CARREGADA",
(3) my Russian/Bugarian
(4) the "RUST" extractor, and
(5) the American "LOADED" and
(6) now Andies
Are there any others?
Big Norm :confused:

Hello to all
This extractor is for me an Bulgarian extractor. I send you a picture from a french book. On the book you can see a bulgarian extractor, note that the caracters are the same as the extractor on the forum.
Best regards
Olivier

french extractor
 

To answer to M. Big Norm I have found in a luger book a french extractor, the autor of this book say that the french luger is rare.
Have all a nice day.
Olivier

A Bulgarian extractor just sold on ebay the first week of Sept for $102.50, I was outbid by $2.50! :mad:

I don't think that these are original black widow grips, but another forum member has done a detailed study of them and may be able to offer a more informed opinion. :confused:

So; To the bottom line - did you pay too much or not? All things considered, and with the status of the grips still undecided, I think you may have stumbled into a break-even deal. With a DWM extractor and some period wood grips, you could probably get $550 for it, and you can make $100 on the extractor. If the grips turn out to be 'black widow', then you can put another $100 in your pocket which would make it definitely a 'plus' deal.

Please take very high resolution (say 600 DPI) closeups of the inside of the grips as glare free as possible. At first impression I believe them to be reproduction grips of fairly recent manufacture. Luke Smithwick and I did the study on the original bakelite grips, and with proper photos I believe we can determine their originality status... Just so you have some idea what genuine bakelite grips are worth, a member of this forum, just paid over $200 for a reasonably nice pair on ebay in the last 72 hours.

Big Norm,

The one with the â??reverse 3â?� is the Russian extractor. It is the frame safety marking that is the same on both the Bulgarian and Russian Lugers. The frame inscription is in Bulgarian, therefore is meaningless in Russian (although I have heard that prior to 1920 the Cyrillic alphabet was the same for Russian and Bulgarian, so perhaps the safety marking would be the same). The interesting thing about these â??safetyâ?� markings is that unlike other Lugers that are really on safe when the marking is showing, it is the reverse situation on the Russian and Bulgarian Luger since the marking means â??fireâ?� and it is only on â??safeâ?� when the marking is covered!

There are extractors other than the ones on your list, some marked the same and some different. The language of Brazil is Portuguese so the Brazilian contract Lugers are also marked CARREGADA. The language of Bolivia on the other hand is Spanish so the Bolivian extractors are marked CARGADO.

The Dutch extractors are marked GELADEN, just like German Lugers, but the extractor is marked on both sides. â??RUSTâ?� is the safety marking.

The French Luger posted by Olivier is indeed rare as the author of the book stated. It is a 1903 transitional Luger and only 50 of them were produced. The CHARGÃ?? marked extractor is unique to this variation, as the later 1906 French Commercials were taken from regular commercial production and the extractors are marked GELADEN.

Except for the Turkish model, I am very fortunate to have examples of all of these extractors. The really neat part is, they are still in the Lugers.
:D

Whoops, I forgot about the Persian extractor. I do not have one of those either (I seem to be coming up short on those "repro" Lugers).

in John Walters book, "The Luger Book" , he identified my above described extractor as a Russian extractor (see page 239). Also on that page, he qualified his identification by saying:

"It is popularly believed that the surviving Russian guns are of 'Bulgarian' type, Owing to subtle differences between the two languages. However, as linguists have now pointed out, there was no differences at all between Russian and Bulgarian until the former was modernized in the early 1920s. Thus, when the Parabellums were supplied, the marks on the Russian and Bulgarian guns would have been identical. ".

So, if I read Mr. Walter correctly, MY EXTRACTORS are of both of pre-1920 Russian/Bulgarian vintage and Andys extractor MAY BE of Bulgarian post-1920 vintage.

It is nice to note that the extractor on the very rare French Luger has "CHARGE" on it and I thank Olivier for that contribution. But the picture that he supplied of the Bulgarian extractor was a little too small for my old eyes to see. Maybe someone who is good with digital photography can enlarge that picture?

In any case, I will be sending an email to Andy to see if he will want to work out a deal for his extractor to help me enlarge my small collection of extractors.
Big Norm :rolleyes:

Ron,
I am sorry if it looks like I repeated your post. I posted about the same time that you did. Your comments posed another question to me. I purchased a 1936 Siamese artillery Luger this past weekend (bragging is good) and I just had to see if the marking on the extractor was unique. It is the usual "GELADEN". Maybe thats good because I would not have wanted to separate it from the gun.
Big Norm

Big Norm,

Walter's statement "when the Parabellums were supplied, the marks on the Russian and Bulgarian guns would have been identical" is not accurate...only the frame safety markings were identical. There is not a common Russian/Bulgarian extractor. The Russian and Bulgarian extractors were always different. The 1906 and 1908 Bulgarian Luger extractors were marked with the same marking as on Andy's Luger. There was only the 1906 Russian model with the extractor marked as your specimens and there were no post-1920 Bulgarian Lugers. It is possible that prior to 1920, the Russian and Bulgarian word for "fire" (phonetically "ah-go-in") was the same and therefore the characters are the same. I believe that the Bulgarian extractor translates as "full" and perhaps the marking on the Russian extractor is some other word (it has been suggested to me that it translates as "captured") and therefore would be spelled differently although written in the same pre-1920 Cyrillic alphabet. I hope that someone familiar with both languages can translate the respective extractor markings...I have always wondered exactly what they mean.

Your Siamese artillery is a rare find. I have never seen one. As I recall, the short barreled Siamese police had Siamese characters on the rear of the frame. Is that true for the Artillery model as well and are there any other distictive markings?

Bulgarian extractor
 

Hallo to all and M.Big Norm
I have try to anlarge the scan of my book of the bulgarian extractor. I hope you can yet read it correctly. I m very sorry for your eyes (the book is: "Le Luger un pistolet de l�©gende" writen by Luc Guillou and Georges Machtelinckx).
Have all a nice day full of Lugers.
Olivier
:bigbye:

Ehm,

The Dutch extractor isn't marked 'Rust' but 'Geladen' on both sides.
That is, because the Dutch word for Geladen is actually Geladen. :D

Ron,
I'll post something in the artillery section for my Siamese artillery Luger. Thanks for your valuable discussion on the extractors.
Big Norm

Great information. Thanks for all the opinions, I am happy to know that I may have stumbled onto a break-even or better. Makes this pistol unique.

Some more pictures of the grips, and a close up extractor.

Grips:

http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/lgrip4.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/lgrip5.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/lgrip2.jpg
http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/lgrip3.jpg


http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/extract2.jpg

More if desired...


Andy

Hi Andy -

Are you still here?

I'm looking at the photo of the left side of the frame, in your 9-19 post. There's a bit too much shadow at the back end, and I can't quite make out the characters under the thumb safety lever. Are they Roman letters, or Cyrillic (like the extractor)? If they are Cyrillic, the extractor may be properly matched to the frame! In which case, I hope you didn't sell it!!!!! Can you post a close-up photo of that part of the gun?????

~Dave

I need a closeup showing the entire back side of both grips taken perpendicular (directly at the grips) as close as you can get in clear focus in order to offer an educated opinion on whether or not they are genuine original Byf grips or reproductions. Thanks.

I don't believe that those are BW grips simply because of the checkering. Take a good look at the third pic.

The frame says "GESICHERT".