Finish Marking help
 

Can anyone identify this stamping? It looks like an s to me. 1937 Mauser salt blue.

It is an s.

Then based on the finish codes I’m guessing my newly acquired Luger had the strawed parts blued at some point in its life. I wonder why someone would do that.
From Jan C Still post in 2003:
Acceptance Stamps, Finish, And Serial Range Suffixes 1937 S/42
p Straw, DE63………… u blue, DE63………… z blue, DE63 to SE63, Start SE83
q Straw, DE63………… v blue, DE63………….ns blue SE63
r Straw, DE63………… w blue, DE63………… a blue SE63
s Straw, DE63………… x blue, DE63…………. b blue 1937 to 4068b then 1938
t Straw blue, DE63… y blue, start of change to SE63

Goetz & Sturgess place the change to all blue parts in 1937 at "around the t suffix block". That leaves it open to the possibility that some late s suffix block Lugers may have been all blue.

Only an in-person examination - or much better pictures - of your Luger can answer whether yours originally had straw small parts or not. I can't determine if your serial number begins with an 8 or a 3.

1937 Mauser S/42. SN 8496s blued.
 

SN 8496s. It’s was advertised and appears to be all numbers matching including the magazine. The grips appear to be plastic replacements with no markings. There is a distinct X marking above the SN on left side of chamber.

Mystery solved. The "X" above the serial number on the left side of the receiver indicates that your Luger was captured by the Russians. They were dip blued by the Russians. Also, grips were removed prior to storage so getting the same grips back on the same pistol almost never happened.

Whatever the original finish, it's now covered by the Russian dip blue.

Thank you Doubs. That is so cool.
My father passed away this year having been preceded by mother last year. While cleaning out the house I discovered a 1903 Colt hammerless and a 1920 (I think) Colt huntsman AND an odd drum magazine I assumed mated to one of the Colts. Turns out it is a Luger snail drum 9mm. So naturally I had to search out a Luger. A specific Luger. Must be a 1937, his birth year, just because. I probably over paid a bit but that’s ok, I got what I wanted.
The cool part...
Dad was also a huge Russian culture and historian buff. It kind of all makes sense.

The numbers "match" because several of them have been overstamped to make them match.
Could have been done in Russian custody.

I would expect to see an import mark somewhere on the pistol.

Condolences on the loss of your parents.

I've read that when the Russians put their captured handguns in storage, they removed the grips and then put the guns in barrels of oil to preserve them. I don't know if it's true but it would explain why the Russian capture guns often have grips on them that were not on them originally.

WRT your Colt .22 pistol. They did not make a Huntsman in 1920. They made a Target Pistol that was later renamed "The Woodsman" in 1927. Those made from 1915 to the name change in 1927 are now called "Pre-Woodsman" pistol. The serial number range for 1920 is 20200 ~ 24999 approximately.

If, as I suspect, there is an oval in the back of the Colt's grip with checkering then ONLY use standard velocity cartridges. The main spring housings on those with the checkered oval were not hardened and hi-velocity cartridges will damage the gun. Colt, for a time, offered replacement MS housings with parallel horizontal lines on it that were hardened and OK with Hi-Velocity cartridges. See picture below.

https://i.imgur.com/PAhhH3n.jpg

Mark,
As Doubs said above, Condolences on the loss of your parents.

This is an interesting link to a video taken in a Russian warehouse full of cases of captured weapons from WW2.

https://tvzvezda.ru/news/forces/cont...af.htm/player/

and there are a few pictures of opened cases in this link:
https://laststandonzombieisland.com/...n-guns-russia/

Enjoy
Richard

Some of the SNs do look a bit messy and maybe they were re-striked.

I had to spend an extra 20 minutes at my FFL because there was no import mark or model number on the gun. The magazine is marked PO8 but since it wasn’t on the gun they wouldn’t use that. In the end the manager wrote Mauser on the 4473 and sent me on my way.