Newbie with questions
 

Greetings,

This is Joel a new guy in Calfornia.

I have been enjoying reading some of the posts and all the info you are sharing.

I inherited a Luger and and also need some feedback to ID it.
I will post some pictures but have a technical issue with that currently.

It has a 4 inch barrel, really nice bluing so I suspect it was redone at some point. has the byf stamp but no date stamped on the top of the frame. There is a small 23 stamped right behind the byf mark but it almost looks like someone stamped an x on it.
The serial # 9590-a is stamped on everything including the one magazine with it. the grips are plastic with the little bulls-eye target cast into it.

any ideas on year etc?

Thanks in advance,

Joel

photos of 9590-a
 

2 photos...

I think that we are gong to hear that this is a Russian captured gun, reworked, dipped, numbers X's out, etc. Maybe some East German Police history. Any importer markings on it?
The toggle is a late production, but I can not tell if the frame has had the number ground off.
But regardless, it is a nice looking shooter. Enjoy!
dju

Hey there,

Wouldn't surprize me that would be it's history

Where would the import marks be?

There is nothing that is obvious to me.

Joel

For these guns, the importer marks are usually on the underside of the barrel , about an inch up from the pistol's receiver.

Sometimes the earlier imports were on the right receiver, even on the underside. hard to explain, but you'll see it if its there ;)

Welcome to the forum!

Ed

It's a VoPo allright.

VoPo?

what's that?

on the bottom of the barrel it has 3 stacked marks: a small crown with a cross on it, then an N under it and under the N the #'s 353

Import marks pehaps?

Joel

VoPo?

what's that?

Russian capture..East German issue. Soviet block Lugers.

Vopo is a shortening of the words "volks polizei" or "civil police" as opposed to military police. The civil police were armed with many nazi era firearms right after the war, mostly from captured Russian stocks.
The marks you mention under the barrel are all factory and not import marks. Yours may be an early import. Some of these were actually taken apart to stamp the import mark, an added step that was later dropped. Your import mark may be on the bottom of th rails on the receiver or the frame, as mentioned earlier. It will be a small group of letters. You will usually be able to make out the abreviation for an American state.

Basically you had 4 major armed groups:

Under the MdI (Ministerum des Innern / Interior Ministry):
Volkspolizei: Police force.
NVA: Nationale Volksarmee: Army.
Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse: Sort of national reserves.

Under the MfS (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit / Ministry of State Security)
'Stasi': State Security 'Police'.

The Barrel markings:
Crown / N is a post WW2 Suhl proof marking. Many VOPO P08 pistols had their barrels replaced, these were proofed in Suhl and got a Crown/N proof marking. 353 is the rework date (march, 1953).

Ah very interesting, thanks so much for the info.

I will keep looking for the import stamps too.

Is there any way to narrow down, with what original info is left on the weapon, when it was originally made?

Joel