[mrerick]

Mike,

If the collector was involved with the online Luger community, you may find his pistols listed in some of the databases like the one Jan referred to. That helps establish provenance.

If you're valuing the pistols for insurance purposes, the retail values you'll find at the dealers I mentioned will get you into the ball park for replacement values.

Direct collector to collector transactions are at a lower price - after all a retail dealer has to make a profit to cover costs and operating profits. You can sometimes determine the direct sales values by looking at past auctions on GunBroker.com and some of the larger firearms auction houses.

This site and Jan's site both offer a "for sale" section where you can list firearms for sale with a stated offering price. You'll want to post good pictures for anything offered online.

It is very rare (in my experience) for local gun shops to have the correct knowledge about collectable Luger pistols, or for them to offer fair prices to buy them. The annually published "Blue Book" gun valuation guides are rarely of any help either.

There are members here that operate businesses and that can offer appraisals of collectable Lugers for a fee. Posting pictures here, you'll also get a range of opinions on collector values as well.

Marc