Vet's Social on Gun?
 

So in my quest to find a nice collector Luger, I came across a documented 1941/42 bring back. The capture papers match up to the vet through the AAD archives. The odd part is that the vet has electro-penciled his social security # onto the left side of the gun. Not his Army Serial # but his SSN. Cheesy? Effect value? Asking 1700 for this one. The #s match, and the blueing appears original. What do you guys think?

Thanks,

Mike

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...ps388f1a63.jpg

Any defacing of this kind will surely affect collector value. Collectors want their guns as close to factory as possible.
That being said the practice of placing your SSN on things was common before thugs learned they could steal from you by having it. It made the item "yours" to the exclusion of all others.

I would knock a couple of hundred off because of the SSN.

I had a 1911A1 Remington with a Texas drivers license number on it. It affected the value greatly, much more than a couple of hundred...

As Alan said above, this was common in the 70's and earlier where I saw ads from police, from insurance, etc, specifcally suggesting putting your name, social or address on valuables, they named, electronics, vehicles, guns, bikes, almost anything and they would loan you the electropencils.

I certainly did this in the 70s-80s, except I was leery of the SSN route and engraved my telephone number, including area code on all my household property, in case it was ever recovered after theft.

Our Police Dept. and County Sheriff's Office encouraged this practice in the 70's to the point that they would loan you an Electro-Pencil.

Thanks for the replies. Very interesting. I would have thought it would have added to the story, tying the vet to the gun. Hmm.. do you think the price is high at 1750? I feel that I'm going to have a lot of appraisal/opinion posts before I pull the trigger

Yes. In fact, I revise my estimate of what I would pay to no more than $1,200.

Unless you plan to pass this on to an heir, think of how difficult this piece is going to be to resell at the asking price.

This exact defacing of a Luger side panel by a SSN has come up before; IIRC, it was corrected by 'scrubbing' the panel and re-bluing by a well known Luger restoration expert who shall remain nameless...I think pictures were even posted... :rolleyes:

...But I'm way too hot to Search for the thread... :(

Yeah, that's too bad on the gun. Definitely will affect value. It just really killed the collector value, to me anyway it would.

Too hot? I'm in Az...100+ and were in our monsoon season...We have humidity too! :(

Anywho, I'm over this one. I'm slowly figuring out what I want. Thinking 1940+ byf. Just love me a nice crisp waffenamt. Ideally I want a complete rig, but I'm ok with piecing it together over time.


Mike

It's now a shooter IMO. Not knowing all the details I wouldn't pay more than a shooter price for it. It's possible the SS# could be erased but you would have several hundred in doing it I would guess..with shipping to a reputable bluer. Certainly $1700 is WAY out of range. I have a beauty here I would be happy to get $1700 for and it's right as rain..no molestation. Save your money for one without the SS# is my advice. Or buy this one for $800 tops.

You probably have central air; we don't. We only get two weeks of Summer, and nine months of Winter. Not worth it to get a/c.

I bet you siesta from 10 to 2, like I did today (90º+/ 90% today). I was talkin' to a dude down in El Paso about an old Remington revolver and he couldn't look it up in Google because everything shut down from 10 to 2... :(

Yep A/C is a must in Arizona. Unfortunately I work outside and a Siesta option doesn't exist!

In NYC's museum, I saw many temple stones coming from Egypt had English engraving on them. For example, "John Engraver visited here in 1814". Probably because Mr. Engraver put the year there, it looks less annoying than many other old scribbles on the stones.