Forum,
If you would, please indulge me.
It is my intention to send the following letter to the friend from which I got the subject of this post (he is a hermit where the internet is involved) . It is not my intention to merely reduce those of you that are willing to read this down to proof readers, but I would appreciate insights into necessary editing of any of the following which you may find incorrect, either slightly or glaringly. Certainly, the addition of neglected or forgotten information would be appreciated as well.
Thanks,
Chip
Hey,
After reading the luger blogs, there is a lot of good, readily available, well researched information on these guns, and their history. Information that has been documented, but there also seems to be much misinformation and guessing going around about much to do with them.
Quite a few were made, something like 760,000, before the end of WWI. A real "ramping up" of production for WWII began when Hitler seized the Jewish owned Simson plant (1934), confiscated its machinery and went into war preparation mode. At the same time, Mauser ignored the Treaty of Versailles and restarted its production. The point is, there are a ton of these guns out there from the Imperial, Wiemar and Third Reich eras, in varying conditions and that were made both for military and commercial purposes. This fragments the collectors into various areas of interest and, accordingly, fragments opinions of value.
When you add to the mix that there are less than scrupulous individuals creating bogus pedigrees, building aggregated guns or faking particular models by replacing parts, you see why the collectors that pay big bucks are very hesitant to do so without a very solid history on a given gun, unless that it is a very rare and documented specimen.
Attached is a list where several authors/collectors have gotten together in an attempt to document as many "early" lugers as possible to help in establishing their authenticity. These guys all seem to be gun show fiends and gather much of the information first hand that way and through the blogs postings. The serial number of this pistol (49962) would seem to fall on page 24 of 60.
The things that the members of the Lugerforum blog have stated that they believe about this pistol are:
It was probably manufactured in the 1911-1912 time period.
It is a 9mm Parabellum, according to barrel markings.
It was produced by the Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) plant, a division of Mauser.
It was a commercial production gun. As officers were required to buy their own side arm, this is consistent with officer ownership.
The 1920 marking is a property marking by the German government, indicating it was potentially government owned at one point.
It was re-manufactured to add a safety sear, a magazine operated "hold-open", a new magazine and other updates. The magazine bottom was serialized to match the rest of the update and was made of aluminum, indicating this was done in the middle '30s. Markings also indicated that it could have been in service as a police side arm at some point.
There is debate as to whether or not it has been re-blued.
According to the blog, whether the pistol is original finish or not could determine whether or not it was worth what I paid you for it; if it had been re-blued, probably not.
All this came before the association with Bennie Buckelew's unit was known or mentioned. That his unit was predecessor to Special Forces/Rangers groups, and with the devil's brigade's accomplishments in WWII. there could be an added prestige attributed to the pistol, if his connection to the pistol can be formally corroborated. There could be additional value provided by written confirmation of the where the pistol was obtained by Mr. Buckelew, depending on the details of the event.
It seems prices for these pistols is all over the map and valuation is unpredictable at best. Some discussion has gone on as to whether the collector market for lugers is growing or shrinking. It has been predicted that with the aging and passing of much of the baby boomer group that have immediate family involvement with family members that brought these guns home, and with a vast variety of "collectible" lugers to choose from, that values may drop in the near future. I don't particularly agree with that reasoning, but I can see where a lot of faking and over-evaluations has apparently gone on. This has caused fakes and irrational pricing and thus may cause excess caution and skepticism to hinder future pricing increases.
The last two paragraphs not withstanding and unless something has been missed by the guys examining the photographs, what I paid for the pistol was probably valued about right given the speculative nature of the condition of the finish. Anything lent to value further will have to be attributable to how the pistol was obtained by Bennie Buckelew and the corresponding verification received from the Buckelew family.
Let me know what you get from them.
Chip
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