New guy here! My father in law is moving out of his house of 46 years and into a smaller apartment. He decided to give me his small gun collection before he moved. Turns out there were six Lugers in the bunch. He had put together this collection over about a six-year period, at one point he had close to 20 but wound up selling most of them. There's four P08s and two Artillery models, all but one are pre-1918, the other is 1941. As near as I can tell all have matching serial #s, except for the magazines. There's also two dated holsters that are coming in a later shipment, one's a pretty beat-up 1918 P08 holster and the other is a VERY nice condition 1915 dated Artillery holster. I also received an Erma .22LR Luger lookalike that looks like it might be fun to shoot.
I know next to nothing about these things except they look cool and they're really old. Would like to keep them in as good a shape as any, but was wondering if any of these is a "shooter" vs. "collectors piece", because I'd REALLY like to take one of these to the range! And while I'm familiar with most of the markings, any help at identification of the (numerous) stamps would be appreciated!
Erfurt artillery:
DWM Artillery:
1916 P08. Note #5, the added inscription on the front strap
1914 P08. Looks like crap. The story the guy FIL bought it from told: gun belonged to seller's dad. When dad passed away, Mom (80 years old) didn't want it around, so she wrapped it in a towel, put it in a box, and buried it in the back yard. Seller spent a year digging up the garden looking for it before he found it.
1918 P08:
1941 P08:
And I almost missed this, it's located on the right side on a curve underneath the slide:
