</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by Big Norm:
Hey John, your getting pretty good at that forensic science. You must be watching a lot of that detective stuff of cable TV.
But lets suppose something else. If you found a matching magazine for one of your prized Lugers but you suspected that the bottom had been changed to an appropriate tube but not otherwise altered, would that change the way you feel about the magazine? Would you still be willing to pay a higher price for the matchup?
A second question that I would like to ask is if you accidentally dropped a matching mag to one of your prized Lugers on the garage floor and then ran over it with your car crushing everything but the wood bottom, would you throw out he entire ruined magazine or try to mount the wood bottom on an appropriate other tube?
Big Norm</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Okay Norm, let me see if I can answer these questions in the correct sequence ...
It all started when I first read the Sherlock Holmes series more decades ago than I care to admit... Add to that all the other mystery and spy novels I have read during the years since that time... add a decade or two of gunsmithing, restoration and repairs. Toss in some hands on Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing, and top it off with the latest re-runs of CSI and nearly five years discussing the techniques of forgery in rare Lugers on this forum and six to seven years experience in digital photography and I have adequate background for some investigative forensics... not to mention that I enjoy it.
2nd answer to your Questions: Unless the mag bottom were installed in an "appropriate" tube with a ROLL pin, how would you ever determine that the set were not original? Punch marks on the head of the pin? That would be a toughie... I would probably be just as happy with the mag because I guess it would be no different that an armorer's repair by canibalizing two otherwise useless magazines into one functional one.
#3...Since I don't own any collector grade Lugers I don't think situation three would make that much difference to me personally... but to the hobby, and to those who trust their fortunes and their sacred honor to collecting Lugers, I guess I would be saddened by the NECESSITY to marry a good and matching wooden bottom to a functional and appropriate magazine tube. I can imagine that if you were a Soldier and you found it necessary to return your military issued P.08 to the arms depot for "work" without magazines but with an appropriate requisition form, you would eventually get it back with two NEW and matching numbered magazines...
I think we often confuse and misuse the terms "matching" - "original" - "authentic" and "correct" in this hobby.
Here is one more situation for you... you are a soldier who has just had his two magazines run over by your own tank (sort of a friendly fire incident) and one tube is mashed flat and the other mag has had the ears broken off the mag bottom by the event... If you have the unit armorer put the good bottom on the good tube, are we now out of the "collectible" arena as far as this mag is concerned... or how would the eventual heirs ever know that this happened?
All of these situations are nothing like the intentional deception practiced by SOME purveyors of antique masterpieces like our precious Lugers, at most they are honest attempts to maintain functionality in a service sidearm with as much "originality" as is possible and practical.