In my opinion it is pure speculation if these are original issue or replacements. The books that refer to these are using a figure that is speculation of 2%, 3%, or whatever, which in my opinion is just a wild ass guess. In a couple of books it is also reported that 1939 code 42's were issued with brown plastic grips also, which again in my opinion is pure speculation. This was all printed on assumptions from older works and hear-say with no actual facts or documentation to back any of it up.
Further, there very well could have been a very few of these issued with brown plastic grips, but today you would NEVER know which were the real issued guns and which were recent made up guns. There are probably at least a 100 times more brown plastic grips on Lugers today than there were in 1940, so in my opinion they have no added value what-so-ever. They look nice, but that's about it, and if they were not pictured or mentioned in a couple of books there would not be much interest in them as being anything special. There is absolutely no way of knowing at what time the brown plastic grips were issued/added, and there is no established serial range, purely random. - Bill
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