[Herb]

Dwight, as I stated I have personally seen all 26 suffix letters to include the 'J' suffix. I wrote each one down as I found them, then put them in alphabetical order, checked each one again, counted each to insure there were in fact 26 total. At the time I did not consider the proof marks relevant and unfortunately did not make note of them therefore I don't know who made the mag with the 'j' suffix. I was so excited to find the 'Z' sufix that I bought that one, a really nice mag too. To insure that I am making myself clear on this I give some examples--If Eurfurt recieves a contract for say 5000 pistols from the Army then they would be numbered #1 to #5000. If the contract had been for 100,000 they would start at #1 and up to 10,000 then #1a, 1b, 1c and so on until the contract was filled. Since they could not fill a contract of that size in one year they only changed the chamber date on 1 Jan and carried on with the next serial number in the sequence, not starting over with #1 again as it was still the same contract. I feel that this would account for the large amount of the 4 digit numbers and so few of the one, two or three digit nembered weapons and magazines. For the smaller contracts, Bulgarian, Russian, Latvian, I have no idea how the numbering or suffixes were chosen. The 'Z' suffix indicates to me that Mauser had recieved a contract, presumably military, for at least 260,000 weapons or more thereby running the suffixes up to the 'Z' block. Is my reasoning illogical?