Production Dates???

[Dwight Gruber]

Lyn,

It doesn't appear the a fiscal-year consideration has any bearing on serial numbering.

Commercial Lugers started with serial#1 in 1901, and continued in an unbroken number sequence until 1921 when the number sequence reached 92000. Commercial numbering then continued in the military style, four digits with a letter suffix, starting with i, and continuing into the v suffix block in 1929.

WWI Imperial P-08 numbering at DWM began with serial#1 in 1908, and ran consecutively into the l suffix block in 1911. From 1912 through the end of Imperial production in 1918 serial numbering began with #1 at the beginning of each calendar year. Erfurt followed this serial numbering scheme throughout their production.

Military Luger production at Mauser began in late 1934, and continued until November, 1942. The 1934 K date guns started with 1 ns (no suffix) and the serial numbers continued in an unbroken sequence throughout production. In the intervening years letter suffixes cycled through the alphabet fully three times, ending in the m block.

Detailed serial number charts can be found in Jan Still's "Imperial Lugers" and "Third Reich Lugers", compiled from the information collected for many years by a number of advanced collectors.

After looking at those charts, I conclude that the statistical dating approach you propose is interesting but very approximate, certainly depending on Stills's information.

--Dwight