Narrowing it down...(the first purchase, that is...)

[Johnny Peppers]

Bart,

The simple answer to the black plastic grips is that they were an authorized replacement for wooden grips when the wooden grips were not available. According to Still, the black plastic grips started showing up in late 1939, were used on approximately 2% of 1940 production, and approximately 20% of production in 1941 and 1942. Even finding a complete rig with plastic grips and plastic magazine bottoms offers no concrete proof that the pistol left Mauser that way. As the magazine bottoms were not serial numbered to the pistol, it is a convenient way to make an all matching rig. Your best bet on a book to give you this information would be Jan Still's "Third Reich Lugers". As the "Black Widow" was never an officially recognized variation, I would doubt that a book would ever be devoted to this grip variation.