pawn shop Lugers
 

i found 2 lugers in a local pawn shop a 1917 DWM and a 1918 erfurt. the 1918 was all matching as far as i could tell but with aluminum mag base and vopo grips. no import marks but made in germany. 4 digit serial. i know nothing about lugers other than firing one 30 years ago. i put the 1918 on layaway for $800. it looks to be about 70% with some surface rust. any help you can give me would be great. thanks ken

Ken welcome to the forums.

This FAQ thread will get you jump started.

http://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=13121

Post pics when you get her home.

i went back and looked at it again today, no made in germany markings. how can i tell which caliber its in? 9mm or 7.65? thanks ken

If a #2 pencil will fit down the barrel, it is 9mm.

ok now i got to buy a pencil!

update got it for $535. should get it home in a week or so

... :eek: ...unbelievable...I mean, that an Erfurt would go for that...little...

not really. alot of pawn shops will base the price on what they loaned on it and the interest for three months , 90 days without interest payments , means it goes out for sale or PFI, pulled for inventory, if 200.00 was loaned on it @ 20 percent per month, meaning there is 320.00 total in the item, if you retail it and it sells for around 500.00 you have doubled. most pawn shops will use a code , so they can tell what they have in it, this can vary from one shop to the next, it will usualy be on the tag above the price , as alpha letters. Now how do i know this , i have owned two pawn shops and currently do firearms repairs for several in the area, most of the times the prices are negotiable, usualy retail prices are about double of the loan plus the interest, hope this may be of some help, regards Dan

i actually feel i got a great deal from there. this shop has some greta deals from time to time.
i have since met the man who pawned it. suposedly a Veitnam bring back and it has vopo grips. i cant wait to bring it home and learn more.

Gee....maybe I should start checking out pawnshops.

It can be hit or miss, for the most part .anything of real value will get picked off, by the staff or sold to the inside circle of repeat buyers, there are 14 shops around this area, it is rare to ever see a luger of any quality ever make it out for open sale, but it does happen. right now there is a fairly nice artilary out for sale, but it happens to be for sale at one of the shops that i am not on good terms with, this does happen in this kind of bussiness, it has to be a bit over priced for what it is , it has been out for sale for over a month.

i have to many hobbies firearms motorcycles and nikon camera's a luger is on my bucket list so right time and place. i bought a Lnib sprinfield trp from the same shop last year for $500!
it's a keeper also.

Can you send me a phone of the PAWN shop , maybe I can get the other gun ?

Interesting, All my time in the republic of viet nam and asia i ran into alot of firearms, never a luger, but it was french indo china, anything is possible. In the pawn shop bussiness you run into alot of odd things and the stories you get with them.

sometimes some of the people you hire are not the most knowledgable about firearms. some days you are just happy no one got shot. you would not believe the number of guns brought in loaded.

The local pawn Shop has two holes in the ceiling!

One shop i use to work at, had bullet holes in the ceiling, interior walls, front window and a slug in one side of the coke box and a near miss on the sign that said your gun must be unloaded before entering,where ever there are firearms there will those that are unsafe.

the 1917 was sold allready and i have the 1918

Vietnam bring back?!? Wow! I have a buddy that brought back a K98 from Vietnam; sadly someone stole it years ago.

One story said Ho Chi Minh asking Soviet Union for arm assistance, and Soviet sent him lots of WWII captured MP40 submachine guns. Facing those C&R, Ho was so angry and ordered his men "move them to the museum".... in front of the Russian representative.

During my time, we captured a ton of chinanese and some soviet weapons never anything german. the nva was pretty well quiped and supplied , but some of the more gorrila groups could have used anything. but more common to find them with old jap surplus.

I know a Vietnam Vet who brought back a K98k.

BTW, the guy inspecting the firearm from the muzzle is on the Darwin List. He just hasn't found out yet.

Like i said the vietnam war lasted over ten years and faught by over a million men and women during that time. Anthing could have or maybe been used over those years. South viet nam covered alot of area of operations, so who knows what may have came from where. being the french were all over the place , they could have brought the german weapons , but who knows.

the french foreign legion was there till 1959

There were plenty of french there, just the military with drew. We often patoled the rubber tree plantations in the north. I recieved a 9mm hi power copy, that was nickled and had dragon ivory grips, from one of plantation owners, still have the grips, the first 9mm i ever owned. Actualy untill that time i did not know about the caliber. The dunce looking down the barrel in the picture, which he asked me take , while he checked the bore, has gone on to another line of work. We actualy never let him around the firearms, i do not have to tell you why.

I believe what you say about this person. The slide is in battery. Kind-of hard to inspect the bore that way.

I live in South Louisiana and visit local pawn shops on a regular basis. My success rate here has been ZERO. However, I have a son who lives in northeast Atlanta. My wife and I visit him every three months of so. My pawn shop success rate in Atlanta is entirely different. So far, I have purchased four Lugers from various pawn shops in the Atlanta area. I have passed on probably that many, incuding a Portuguese Navy that was priced too high. I have a '37 S/42 in transit now from an Atlanta pawn shop.

Mike

Mike, I'm not sure where in south Louisiana you are, but I live in Covington and the pawn shop there has four or five lugers in the case. I saw them the other day but didnt ask to see them so I dont know what they were. or price.

The French forces used a lot of German made equipment during the Indochina wars. So you can expect to find P08's, P38's, K98's and HSc pistols in that area.

An interesting question is what happened to the tonnes of equipment that the US left in Vietnam. It was one of the ongoing frustrations of Sam Cummings (Interarms), he knew there was plenty of stuff for him over there, and it never surfaced :)

Update i sold some ar items and should be picking it up next week. i need replacemnet grips and a magazine to use it any good leeds ? thanks ken

well the Luger is home the magazine is aluminum bottom which has the serial number 6350 and the number 2 stamped the blue is so dark its almost black.all major numbers stamped with last 2 numbers. also the Vopo grips. i willtry to get good pics soon

has the right proofmarks for a erfurt 1918, barrel has no serial number but a N with a crown over it.

well i got my mecgar magazine and now the toggle locks back like it should. my aluminum base mag has some kind of proof marks and the number 2 also th last 2 of the frame numbers match. im going to have a friend with a good micro camera setup to take some pics for me. any help you can give would be great. thanks ken

Hi Ken,

Sounds like you have a nice VoPo Luger rework with an East German Haenel Schmeisser extruded magazine.

Does it have import marks?

VoPo Lugers are becoming collectable - don't toss the grips or the magazine.

Congratulations!!! Love to see pictures.

Marc

no import marks just the 1918 markings on the right side of receivers

There was a lot of European equipmwnt in the early days of VN.
French left overs or what ever.

Whole companies of CIDG were armed with MP 40s and MAT 49s.

SF remote A Camps had a sort of hap-hazard supply source. We even were expected to get chow from the local economy.

We had field expedience honed to an art.

Friend of mne from the early days said two crates of Lugers showed up once and they were distributed to the troops as intended. He lost his in a river crossing.

Lots of the older exotic stuff had been used up by my time, 68-70.
Even the remaining VC had pretty much standardised weapons by then, but there was the occaisional exception.
I saw a chromed MP 40 and had a scrounged silenced Sten.
I was forced to carry a M2 carbine my 1st few months.
Not an inspirational weapon.

Vlim,

A British arms dealer bought a lot of guns from the Vietnamese government back in the 1990's; my 1945 M1911A1 Colt was one of them.

Balder

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...1/m1911a1L.jpg

Although thousands of WW2 era weapons were stacked and torched, (I posted photos some weeks ago), the modern stuff did not go to waste. The Pinochet goverment in Chile confiscated thousands of M16s in the late 1980s, which had been smuggled in by leftist groups in sugar sacks from Cuba. They all serialed out to have come from US and South Vietnamese stocks left in VN after 1975.

Our weaponry has been arming "movements of national liberation" across the globe ever since.

Update my barrel have no serial number but has a CROWN over N proof. is this a replacement?

East-German replacement, most likely.