Okay Ted, here's my 'shot' at an explanation
Since that was right after Mauser got into the Luger production business, I would think that the first bunch of Lugers required some adjustment of the tooling in order to produce acceptable manufacturing standards.
It would seem from your photo that if this is an original barrel that the crowning procedure may have required too much room to allow proper (original) shaping of the front sight base. Mauser may even have attempted to produce Luger barrel blanks before they got into the actual production of the gun and these were ultimately used in production guns even though they were not built exactly to the blueprint, they were certainly serviceable.
I can't say that I have ever seen a front sight base quite like the one in your photo. I have looked at all the pictures I have web grabbed and none looks like that. Perhaps another forum user out there has another K-date that we can compare with this photo.
Marvin? Tom? Kyrie? How about it guys?
that's my $0.02
-John
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