Hi,
I've also observed pistols which have the X on the trigger guard beneath the serial number on the front of the frame.
My VoPo has a force-matched receiver where, as the result of some wear caused by the side plate lever, the old serial number can be seen, faintly, where the new serial number was stamped.
They seemed to force match the major parts as well (frame /receiver) by removing the number on the receiver, matching it to the one on the frame. They didn't bother to remove or renumber small parts and just X-ed them out.
To me, the big Russian X is no rework stamp, but just a simple marking that was applied to fire arms to mark them as Russian property. Therefore the phrase 'capture mark'. A bit like the 1920 property mark of the Weimar Reichswehr.
The VEB Ernst Thalmann in Suhl was actually a combination of former German companies that ended up on the wrong side of the border. It most certainly had the equipment of Haenel and Walther in it's possession and the company's DDR deliverer's code was '1001', which found it's way on the magazine tubes and the so-called 'Pistole 1001', which was no more than a Walther PP/K.
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