Dutch Lugers - Refinished & Rebarreled...
 

Reading through my Dutch Luger book, I learned that the Dutch lugers in the East Indies (and maybe the West Indes) routinely were refinished every 6-7 years at local colonial Dutch arsenals and regularly had their barrels replaced (new barrels had the replacement date stamped with 4 digits). Both driven by the demands of the torrid tropical weather and humidity.

Pricing of such Dutch lugers today does not seem to be negatively affected by such refinish and rebarrel jobs (but I think all original Dutch lguers from the tropics do command a price premiun).

My question is this :

If such refinish and rebarrel work is routinely "accepted" by collectors for these Dutch colonial lugers, why are other lugers (not Dutch) so looked down upon when they have evidence of such rework ? <img src="graemlins/yltype.gif" border="0" alt="[typing]" />

[quote] If such refinish and rebarrel work is routinely "accepted" by collectors for these Dutch colonial lugers, why are other lugers (not Dutch) so looked down upon when they have evidence of such rework ? <hr></blockquote>

My thoughts are that since almost all of these guns were refinished the collector has little choice in what he/she gets. Where refinishing was the norm for these guns it was not for the rest of the P.08's made. I would liken it to collecting East German P.08's most all were reworked so the collector MUST accept a refinished gun.