LugerForum Discussion Forums - How to ID your Luger

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- - How to ID your Luger (https://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=31977)

NEW Collectors READ this

When we are trying to help you, and we realize you may not know the terms and right way for a luger, but the following will help a lot.

1. Put what your luger is in the title (or whatever, 1917 DWM etc)

2. Pictures can make the process so much easier and you WILL be asked for them if you want any approx values; plus do #3 below....

3. If you can't do pictures, then give a good description; markings on the right, looks like eagle 655's? Markings on top of the gun, says DWM, and a date of 1916 of byf on the toggle and two larger numbers on the receiver of 41

4. When you post, go down a bit (use the NEW TOPIC) and there will be a drop down that says NOTIFICATION TYPE, this will send you an email (no one gets your email) and then you know folks have posted.

5. Pictures, this is slightly hidden, go just above Notification Type and click on manage attachments, this will cause a Pop Up window to open (so this must be turned on for this site) and then you go to your hard drive and choose the pictures.

6. Ensure pictures are not HUGE, it will try and shrink them down, but they must be reasonable size and then you will get to post them. if too large, you will get a "security token missing" / trust me, that means your photos are too big, some kind of glitch in the system.

The more info you give us, the more we can help.

Ed

How to ID your Luger

Here are many things we look for to ID your Luger - see the pictures and then description
BTW it is best to post pictures HERE on this forum, as experience shows that folks delete when they put pictures on photo-bucket and the like...

1, Take a picture of full left - it will explain to us very quickly what we see

2. Full right - not only does it show us, but we can see any proofs or other markings

3. Shot from above - this quickly shows us - YEAR - Who MADE - and we can see if a Police (sear safety)

4. Front of frame show us the serial number and any suffix - which pieced together from above helps tremendously

5. close up of left - shows serial number no suffix - then also shows us if military marked (not hidden)
Also, if a commercial or early gun, it might show a crown N on the left

6. Front of grip strap - this shows us if unit marked - however.... see last

7. Magazines - do they match? if not, we can at least tell you what they are - these two are one WW1 wood and a later Weimar or WW2 aluminum bottom - both match and show they are police numbered

8. Close up of the right shows the acceptance and proof on the right, there is usually one on the barrel towards the rear

9. Date - is mostly obvious - but a 1920 can be a government marking or a date, so showing us helps a lot

10. Here is an unusual spot for a unit marking, this one is police. Be advised that on rare occasions you will find one on the rear strap or the back of the toggle area. Also, Navy guns may be marked on the rear gripstrap

If the max resolution is 1110 x 1100, that works out to roughly 1.16 MBs.

Most digital cameras take bigger pictures, for example, on a typical 10 or 12 Mega pix camera, the original photo can be as large as 10 MB's.
That is the "RAW" picture format.
When you convert it to a .jpg (JPEG) format, the file size is reduced significantly.
You can convert the file to .jpg (JPEG) directly on the camera or using your computer.

You can reduce the file size further by cropping the photo to cut out unwanted areas.

Using PhotoShop is ideal - it will allow you the most options to resize and adjust your photo.
PhotoShop Elements is $99 - it's all you need.
But, there are other tools that are simpler, even on a modern digital camera.

The background is not important, but the more complex and detailed it is, the bigger the photo file will be, so simplest backgrounds take the least amount of files space.

Things are different than they were several yeas ago. Most of the time you don't have to shrink photos (cropping to the item desired is good (i.e. taking out the shoes and workbench stuff)).

The software on this forum will automatically shrink many photos, here is an example,it started off as 969kb (almost a megabyte)

ed