Raymond,
First, congratulations on having a fine Mauser Banner Commercial pistol made in 1939 as part of the v-block series.
The v-suffix was used over a number of years spanning from the early changeover days from DWM until 1939. Thus your pistol is one of the last v-suffix guns.
The v-block contained about 8700 pistols, of which about 3200 were Commercials. The balance were Police or Foreign contracts.
A couple of words abouts some of the stampings you have reported.
The Crown U seen in several places on the pistol is a Proof mark. It is called the Oberndorf Proof House mark. A large version was used in early production and a smaller version was used later on until it was replaced in 1940 by the Eagle proof stamp.
The mark on the toggle link and sometimes found on the Receiver and looks like an intertwined W and R is the Werks Revision (Factory Control) stamp. There will other internal markings dealing with factory inspections or identifying the assembler of the component scattered on the pieces.
Your side plate is stamped with the number 90. This the the first two digits of the serial number plus. 89 plus 1 equals 90.
Grip plates are properly numbered with the last two digits of the SN as are most small parts
Small parts are blued as is correct; although there are exceptions in the late V-block that have been observed with strawed parts.
Of some interest, is the fact that your Banner is the so-called Banner 5, i.e it has 5 bars in the Mauser logo. I say that it is of some interest because at SN 8900, there was a transition from 5 bar to 7 bar and I, personally, have never seen a 5 bar Banner above SN 8800 or so. FYI, there were 3 Mauser designs with 8, 5 and 7 bars respectively.
Your variation of the v-block Banner has been rarely reported in collections. Don Hallock spent years gathering data for a Database of Commercial production and usage. In the process of gathering data he deduced that the survival rate of guns varied between say 3 and 5 percent.
In the latest series of production, i.e 8900 and above only about 1 percent are reported. This leads some collectors to believe and production stopped on the v-block and many of these pistols supposed in the last thousand were never produced. In any case, your banner with that high a serial number in the v-block is somewhat rarely seen. As far as I know only a few over 8900 are on record. But others may comments as to their experience.
In any case the v-block was replaced by the w-block shortly after your gun was produced. But the w-block is another story.
Hope this helps. Apologies for being so verbose.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
John
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