[Herb]

I think that documenting the Lugers that we know to be good is allright. I bought a 1918 DWM from Ralph last March. I have no problem registering it's current condition for the benefit of a possible future owner as I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when I go to the happy Luger hunting grounds she will dispose of it, as well as all the others in my collection. I guess what I am trying to say is that positively stating that a 1935 Mauser will have ONLY these markings and no others is really shakey. If one had ten of them in front of him and closely examined every one they probably would all have different marks in one place or another. I am reasonably sure that Mauser, DWM, etc. each had several inspectors and also several Waffenampt final inspectors that accepted the pistols that came off the line on any given day. Each one of these inspectors would have a different stamp, therefore the same days run would bear several different markings from the same factory although not on the same Luger. I don't know, am I making any sense here? I am leary of anything unusual such as a 'deaths head' stamping, or any so called 'rare' variation regardless of the price. I think that registering known 'originals' by serial number is ok, it would at least provide a data base that one could check the serial number to see if it is there and did it have that marking at that time. Of course this data base would be useless to any of us since the weapons are still held in private collections and are very unlikely to be on the open market for quite some time, ie; when we die. Over the years it would come to be invaluable to future buyers assuming that someone maintains it. Of great current value would be for the big sellers like Ralph, Simpson and others to join in on such a project as their Lugers will be hitting the market almost on a daily basis, they would also benefit by having the accurate condition data on a particular date from each other. Who has the big carrot to get them to do this, that is a lot of work?