My only 1917, a slightly mismatched one.
I had painstakingly restored it with original parts as best I could from its 4" military upper condition to "just" a mismatched 1917 Navy. I was lucky to find a complete matching to itself 1917 navy upper. Note the odd cross numbering of the magazine, if I squint a little I can convince myself its number matches the frame.
Fast forward a few months, I hear via the transferring shop that the serial number showed up as stolen!
This example was a pain in the derriere to keep!
When it transferred to me and the serial number run by NCIC,
it came back "stolen". Before you get too excited as to the "why" it was checked, it is a NC law that weapons that pass through a pawn shop have their serial number submitted and checked to see if stolen.
Seems this one was stolen 30 or 40 years ago in the mid west.
The man who owned it had died, but his wife was still alive and when the local PD detective contacted me- she wanted it back.
After some back and forth about luger serial numbers and suffixes, I could not prove this was not the pistol stolen- with just a 4 digit serial number reported. Yes, this navy has no suffix. So I was obligated to return it.
Longer story short, I wound up explaining to the son of the wife all about lugers and how what I bought was not what was stolen, but only part of it at best- and that what I had now was mostly "my" parts on what might have been his father's original frame.
He was reasonable and I only had to pay a few hundred $$ ransom to get to keep the frame.
It took several more weeks and email and phone calls with the detective to get the serial number removed from the NCIC system.
So, here it is, in all its reconstructed glory.
