My uncle flew and repaired planes in Vietnam. He sent quite a few guns back to my dad. Some of them were brand new M1 carbines (and variants!). After being warned several times his CO finally put a stop to it when he tried to mail some Thompsons back. He said it was fairly easy to find whatever you wanted back then, either locally or by "obtaining" it from Uncle Sam. Jeeps, guns, whatever could be had by writing "lost in combat" on the inventory sheet. He also told the story about being ordered to shoot elephants, which his buddy did with a 40mm grenade launcher...but that's another story.
Anyway, when he got back to the US, he became a missionary in South America. In his spare time, he continued his gun hunt and brought many guns back. Most were older like the model 92 Winchester 44-40 he gave me. My dad visited him for a few weeks during the early 80's and the gun supply was undoubtedly a bonus. My dad and I were talking about Lugers the other day and he related a story of an open market they visited in Bolivia. They spotted a table with several guns and lots of German WW2 items. This included two or three Lugers. He said the vendor had a German accent and while he'd priced most items fairly cheap, the Lugers were "about $1500 each" as he recalled. Though that sounds acceptable now, nearly 30 years ago maybe not. My dad figured the seller was one of the German military that moved to SA after the war and that the guns were his ("his" meaning his personal side arm when he was serving). At that price my dad figured he really didn't want to sell the Lugers. Stories like that make clear that A) there are a lot of Lugers out there and B) they can be found anywhere and everywhere.
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