books
 

I have some of Mr. Stills books.(I haven't found a copy of his Weimar volume or his first volume.) I have Datigs book. I have Luger Tips. I know of a copy of Costanzo's book which is available.I do not have Lugers at Random. I have seen copies of Luger Variations. My question. For educating myself as a newbie. I have one Luger and wish to ground myself before proceeding. Suggestions? Thanks to you sages out there. Jim

Get both of Still's first books, they are the newest and have lots of technical information.

Jim, All the books you mention should eventually be in your Luger reference library... The Costanza book is a rare one and often brings $325 or more...

If you haven't checked out the Luger E-books by Gerard Henrotin (the guy who did the Luger animation on our home page) check them out by clicking on the available link. These books are informative, and have great illustrations. My favorite is the book on Luger mechanicals...

They are less than $9 to download (each), and well worth the money in my opinion. The only problem with them is that they use a copy protection scheme that locks them to the computer where they are first installed, so you can't take them with you unless you own a laptop.

Jimmiej, remember the old saying "Knowledge is power" ? That expression is especially important in the hobby of Luger collecting especially since so many faked markings are showing up and many refinsh jobs are very difficult to detect. If you intend to seriously get into collecting get all the references you can afford and it's easy to spend over $1,000 just on references. It's really difficult to say which ones would be the best ones to buy as all of them have tid-bits of valuable info. Here is a link where you can usually find most of them at widely varying prices. In the title bar type in Luger then search, then Lugers and search, that should get you most all of them that can be found among the various sellers.
http://www.bookfinder.com/ Good luck to you and your budget, you are on the right track.

Jimmie,

Please be sure to check out John Walter's 'Luger' and 'The Luger Story'. Although the books are dated at some points and I wouldn't recommend them for collection/idenfication they show a good deal of background information.

If your German is good, get Joachim Goertz 'Die Pistole 08' (the revised edition).

Jim,

Welcome! Like you, I'm a newbie with one Luger. Based on my very recent experience on the Luger Forum, I recommend posting photos and a description of your gun and asking for input. It's a bit like chumming for sharks. Put a little blood in the water and then step back and watch the feeding frenzy! It really can provide you with a great amount of very valuable information in a hurry. I wouldn't wait until I'd bought and studied all the references.

Don

P.S. I second John's recommendation of the Henrotin e-books as being a quick, cheap way to get started. If you have enough paper, you can print them out.

jimmiej,

I recommend that you check out this linkon book recommendations.

--Dwight