[alvin]

Reading is definitely necessary, so collector does not start from ground zero. I agree that certain conventional theories having some holes. An example theory was C96 jumping on s/n in its early days, which was not referred frequently these days. Probably collector community realized gun manufacturing was not clean cut everywhere, transitional period was very normal.

Since Erickson, the most important published data on C96 (and other Mauser guns) was "Mauser Archive".

[Edit] And, collectors have noticed, through sample observation, that many minor changes on C96 are not meaningless. Probably very obvious to previous generation of collectors, so no one mentioned those. But actually interesting though.