Hi,
The internet has given guys like you and I access to other collectors all over the world and access to information -- I agree with this.
The major dealers and collectors have been traveling all over the world for years though and they know and have had contacts with most of the other major collectors. They have visited and looked at many collections and have contacts looking for them from motel buys to what is in auctions and museums and these SS marked examples were not around then. This shows just how widespread all this enhancing is in my opinion.
Guess it all gets down to just how optimistic one is. Kind of like the takedown tool thread where these faked tools are cheap and aren't hurting anything. When a real tool is found that doesn't fit the known examples it will always be considered a fake due to all the fakes floating around. And people say refurbished and reproduction stuff isn't hurting our hobby.
Jan Still wrote that when he published his book there were 32 known examples of the Mauser Military Police examples known in 1988 and when they became popular and in demand a "dealer" made up 100 of them of all examples. So there are more faked examples than known examples since 1988. Now, anytime you find a police Luger that is outside of the recorded serial numbers you are going to have a terrible time convincing anyone that it is real.
The ss runes on Lugers and tools are just like the example above that if there ever were any real ones, (which is very questionable) there are so many more faked ones than there ever were real ones that no one will believe any of them are real.
|