Hi Wolfgang,
Back in the mid 1980's, I used to own a cased Loewe Borchardt serial #63 which came out of Chile where quite a few were sold. When my father was a United Nations diplomat attending a conference in Chile in the early 1990's, he met a guy who had five cased Borchardt pistols for sale all of them having two digit serial numbers in very good condition. Each one was being offered for $5,000 which my father unfortunately made the mistake not to buy at least two of them because they did not look nice to his eyes!
The one that I had for about two years until I traded it for a very rare 'GL' Luger pistol had the owner's name and date 1899 on the case badge, but it does not mean a production date. It only indicates when the pistol was retailed, and I have an early Albrecht Kind (AKAH) catalog that still offers the Borchardt until 1903 which I reckon are the DWM models.
In my opinion, it normally took about 2-3 years for a certain model pistol to start appearing on the market such as the M1900 Luger appearing in 1902 etc. Another example is with M1902 Luger carbines which started to offered in dealer catalogs around 1908.
Continue Enjoying your study of the Borchardt pistols!
Cheers,
Albert
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