[John Sabato]

Can't help with the inscription Ron, but the Crown looks very much like the crown on the Erfurt Toggle marking of Lugers. Perhaps it is some kind of acceptance by the Erfurt State Armory of this pistol into official service? (just a theory!)

Regarding experiences with this type of pistol, a very close friend of mine bought one in a private sale in 1966 (OH MY GOSH that was FOURTY FOUR years ago!) for $20 from one of his neighbors and I believe that it had been brought back from WW1 by a grandfather in the sellers family.

It had not been fired since the end of WW1, and was wrapped in a rag and covered in congealed grease. My friend enlisted my assistance in determining how to disassemble it for cleaning. This is way before the internet, and the only exploded diagrams available at the time were in the NRA books, Shooters Bible, and the Numerich Gun Parts catalog. Luckily, my young gun library had one or more of those.

I was able to decipher the disassembly procedure and we got it apart and cleaned well and back together... then took it to the range. It was LOUD, and had about a 25 pound trigger pull as I recall. After working with it for a while with some good arkansas stones, we got the trigger down to about 7 pounds and we figured that this was good enough.

I never like the gun but appreciated the experience... it was one of my first gunsmithing "adventures"