A pretty clear summary of the discussion. Some nitpicky factual corrections below.
--Dwight
After reading the luger blogs, there is a lot of good, readily available, well researched information on these guns, and their history. Information that has been documented, but there also seems to be much misinformation and guessing going around about much to do with them.
Quite a few were made, something like 760,000, before the end of WWI. A real "ramping up" of production for WWII began when Hitler seized the Jewish owned Simson plant (1934), confiscated its machinery and went into war preparation mode.
Simson was the official repair company during the Weimar (between wars) period, and the only company allowed to produce new P08s for the Reichswehr, the Weimar German army. Simson P08 production ended when the company was nationalized and its manufacturing resources were distributed amongst other arms manufacturers.
At the same time, Mauser ignored the Treaty of Versailles and restarted its production.
P08 production "ramped up" for wartime when Mauser was awarded the army's P08 contract. Army production began in 1935.
The point is, there are a ton of these guns out there from the Imperial, Wiemar and Third Reich eras, in varying conditions and that were made both for military and commercial purposes. This fragments the collectors into various areas of interest and, accordingly, fragments opinions of value.
When you add to the mix that there are less than scrupulous individuals creating bogus pedigrees, building aggregated guns or faking particular models by replacing parts, you see why the collectors that pay big bucks are very hesitant to do so without a very solid history on a given gun, unless that it is a very rare and documented specimen.
Attached is a list where several authors/collectors have gotten together in an attempt to document as many "early" lugers as possible to help in establishing their authenticity.
Is that the Commercial database?
These guys all seem to be gun show fiends and gather much of the information first hand that way and through the blogs postings. The serial number of this pistol (49962) would seem to fall on page 24 of 60.
The things that the members of the Lugerforum blog have stated that they believe about this pistol are:
It was probably manufactured in the 1911-1912 time period.
More likely 1911, possibly late 1910.
It is a 9mm Parabellum, according to barrel markings.
It was produced by the Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) plant, a division of Mauser. Both Mauser and DWM were independent companies, controlled by a financial conglomerate which also controlled a number of other arms manufacturers. It is not correct to say that either DWM or Mauser was a "division" of the other.
It was a commercial production gun. As officers were required to buy their own side arm, this is consistent with officer ownership.
The 1920 marking is a property marking by the German government, indicating it was potentially government owned at one point. The 1920 property marking was a mandate of the German army and police for a brief period in 1920. This pistol was assuredly in government control at that time,.
It was re built probably better to say that it was repurposed to police use, there are no mixed-parts characteristics of rebuilding.
to add a safety sear sear safety,
a magazine operated "hold-open", Commercial P08s were sometimes manufactured with a hopld-open. From your pictures there is no evidence that a hold-open was added later.
a new magazine and other updates. The magazine bottom was serialized to match the rest of the update the pistol's serial number. The digit 1 indicates that this was the pistol's primary magazine.
and was made of aluminum, indicating this was done in the middle '30s. The production magazine base material was changed to aluminum in 1925. It is most likely that this magazine base was a replacement part manufactured before 1933.
Markings also indicated that it could have been in service as a police side arm at some point. The sear safety is an indication that this pistol was in police service after 1933.
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