Older Harry Jones listing
 

This is from the 60’s? List number 864 (Yikes) and prices are around $100 for a Luger – late 1960’s?

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Ed

I'm saving and repeating the quote on oats!

G2

Well, that's an interesting sales letter... Helps set the tone for Luger collecting back in 1964 just before the GCA in 1968... You could actually buy your Luger and have it shipped to you in the mail.

A 1964 dollar is worth $8.40 today if you want to do calculations on the prices. A $250 1964 luger would be $2,100 today... tracking inflation.

Bought my 1st Luger about 1962. A well worn BYF 41.
$25 with a good holster. I was 15 or 16.
We also bought sight unseen from Shotgun News ads.
Very few problems with that in those days.

1964 G+A add -
 

late 50's , early 60's many vets cleaning out attics + basements - saw pristine artillaries go for $25.00 - personally picked Nazi + jap helmets + bayonets from curbside garbage - wish i had not sold most in 65 when i married -

japanese Helmet
 

I still have my Japanese Helmet.
Found in Papuan (New Guinea) jungle at Ioribaiwa the furthest point the Japanese reached on the Kakoda campaign.

Around 1977 I and a few others hiked to Ioribaiwa and looked around. The helmet was in a foxhole and pretty rusty after 50 years in tropical rainforest.
There were also a bunch of cookpots and bottles found in the trenches there. No sign is still obvious, I looked with the perspective "The Australians are on that ridge over there (Imita) and shooting at me, where do I make a foxhole or trench". Then dig.
Most were just filled with leaves and debris, so digging with long pole to encourage inhabitants to leave (venomous snakes)

I did clean it up and lacquered to prevent additional rust.
2 of the 3 anchor points for the liner are still original.

I guess the original user had a shrapnel problem

That is a great piece of history, all the better that you brought it home. I tend to like collectables that do show use as they do speak as to "being part of the battle". It shows the reality of what war was (and is).

I disagree with our governments policy from the Iraq war that prohibited (for the most part) the bringing back of war trophies.

G2

Note that the page number references in Jones' Sales List are to his book "Luger Variations". The list appears to be from late '64 or '65. Really nice paper, Ed.

Did Harry Jones ever publish Volume 2?

No

I bought a second hand copy of Harry Jones Luger Variations book last year, at a very reasonable price. It has some really nice photos in it.

In the late 1950s I would often spend the day at Golden State Arms in Pasadena, Ca. You could buy a Luger for $39 or an Artillary model for $69. Civil war swords were $17 and they had barrels of them. They were cleaning out the arms warehouses in Europe because the European countries needed money to rebuild. You could buy British and other country's uniforms from the mid 1900s for very little money. What you need to understand that for a time there was what seem to be an unlimited supply and the we were dealing with silver backed money. Well, we discovered later that the supply had ran out. I well remember the time I saw an average Luger at a gun show priced at a whopping $100. Was the guy nuts. No he wasn't, I was, or had been. I actually did buy a Simson Luger in a sporting goods store for $42. Sadly I didn't keep it. When I shot it, it would fail to eject the empty case. I read about two weeks after I traded it that Remington Ammo was way underloaded. I have traded off some really great guns for very little money but that one I regret the most.

in the 50's, all of our small towns in Mississippi had an Army and Navy surplus store....i still have several items i remember well when i bought them....and barrels full of stuff is very accurate.......Tom

Tom, our little town in Missouri had one of those surplus stores, You could buy a new Cavalry saddle for $18.

that's what we are talking about !!

Just remember that in the 50's fifty dollars was a lot of money. When I started working , after college, as a Forester I got $4040 per year. My apartment was $48 per month. Bill

exactly Bill - I think we all forget. I will think out loud that I paid $1500 for a luger and when I look at my records, realize I paid $1000 for it 15 years ago (or so) :)

♫ Those Were The Days ♪

And you knew where you were then, ♫
Girls were girls and men were men, ♫
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again, ♪
Didn't need no welfare states ♫
Everybody pulled his weight, ♪
Gee our old Lasalle ran great, ♪
Those were the days ♫

Army Navy Surplus Ruled

Yep. Leave it to Beaver, open segregation and sexism, and polio! Who could ask for more?

When I was growing up, there was an immense war surplus yard called Smith and Edwards just outside of Ogden Utah and close to the 2nd Street Army Depot that was one of the main supple points in the western US during the war. German and Italian helmets, uniforms, blades and you name it were just a few of dollars. They would let you wander the yard and I remember climbing all over Sherman and Stewart tanks and White Halftracks just for fun. I picked up an M2 carbine from Smith and Edwards for peanuts when they were still legal along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. A kid with a machine gun is an awesome thing. We'd go out into the desert by where they drove the Golden Spike and shoot endless amounts of rounds through that carbine. If only I would have known to keep it. Smith and Edwards is still there, but the inventory has changed a bit since.

Hi,

Remington ammo then, was much closer to being in proper Luger spec. than now.


Respectfully,

Sieger