[Edward Tinker]

In ref to the Simson only comment, the contract was signed in 1924, first new made in 1925.

Prior to this DWM made lugers for the military and police, in the open until the IMKK (does that look right? this was the commission set up to oversee that the versailles treaty was being enforced. Keep in mind that in my opinion that the commission, especially the French made up the rules as they went along).

Around the early 20's (1922 / 1923) they raised hell with DWM and the German gov't and started to make only contract and commercial lugers (i.e. 7.65mm) although it is known that guns were siphoned off to the military and police.

This does bring up something I just read the other night; in Sturgess' book he states that there is a directive that 3,000 lugers were purchased new for the army in 1925 and another 3,000 in 1926. At first I thought this was a breakthrough comment of how many lugers Simson really made (it is assumed that less than a 1,000 were made by 1926; however, it is unlikely to me that you would have dated 1925 and 1926 lugers that didn't go into the 6,000 range (there are no documented Simson's after sn 700, as I own 701 and it is not dated, plus I have a large database of hundreds of guns after that with no date). So, obviously these lugers were procured from Simson AND DWM in my opinion.

Just some additional history that I wanted to throw out there and like Don and Ron, the Weimar period is a fascinating history lesson.

Ed