[Ron Wood]

Ed,

You are asking questions the answer to which I have been seeking for well over 20 years. The U.S. Test Luger has been a vexing problem since, unlike most other contract Lugers, the contract was filled within the commercial production and not a separate serial number block. Therefore, the distinct possibility exists that commercial Lugers might be found intermixed in the â??oft time stated 6100-7100â? serial number range.

Reese derived much of his information from military records and documentation that he reproduced in considerable detail in his book on the 1900 US Test Trial Lugers. The critical information that he does not show in his book is the documentation that substantiates the 6100-7100 range! Thus we have the nebulous, and possibly mythical, â??rangeâ?.

I personally have considerable doubt that the Test Lugers were consecutively numbered. I have been continuing to compile serial numbers of Lugers having Test Trial characteristics from a number of sources, to include lists from notable individuals such as Harry Jones and Sam Costanzo. I am nearly ready to publish an updated list of observed serial numbers, which consists of 17 examples â??below the rangeâ?, 302 examples within the publicized range of 6100-7100, and 98 examples â??above the rangeâ?. With that many out of range examples, I have little confidence in 100 or any other number of replacement Lugers. In fact, with the quality control exercised by DWM, I doubt that there were any rejects and/or replacements. I think that any â??non-within rangeâ? pieces are strictly the result of filling the contract with non-sequential serial numbers.

I have been earnestly seeking any examples within this grouping that can definitely be identified as commercial pieces. I found 4 possible examples, one of which I eliminated this past weekend. Two of the others I doubt that I will have a chance to observe. But the remaining fourth example I hope to examine and measure within a month or two, and hopefully establish that there were indeed commercial examples within the sacred 6100-7100 range.

This has been a long and exhaustive process, and in all honesty I really doubt that I will ever get it resolved. But I will try, possibly for another 20 years, to attempt to construct the history of the U.S. Test Trial Lugers from empirical data.