Gentlemen,
There were about 120 AB9 P.38's newly manufactured in East Germany (Suhl) possibly around 1953. They may have made this run of pistols to start testing a "tooling up" process to produce new guns. Many P.38's were reworked at this time as well.
Here is a link to my AB9 gun, I have since found out that the grips are not correct but you can see the hand fitting and assembly of the smaller parts.
http://www.p38guns.com/AB9.htm
And a link to several East German reworked pistols from WWII parts.
http://www.p38guns.com/EastGerman.htm
NEW INFORMATION:
On page 4 of Dieter Marschall's book "Handguns of the Armed Organizations of the Soviet Occupation Zone and German Democratic Republic"
"About 100 Luger pistols were newly manufactured in 1953 in the VEB Ernst Thalmann facility in its "Special Production" section. This was military production under the code designation of "1001". These pistols were given the prefix letter"N". (for Neufertigung, new production) to their serial numbers."
So there you go! They had the same green-brown grips that my P.38 should have..... Ya learn someting new everyday!
If anyone out there has a set of those P.38 grips let me know!
Mark@p38guns.com
Mark