1914 Erfurt Arty...

[Big Norm]

MauserLuger,
my hats off to you my friend, you clearly beat me with you tremendous find. What is the date on the holster? On my 1915 rig, I found a 1915 holster rig for it and, like you, I have some other undated stuff that I can put on it. My search for holsters is relatively recent. For most of my collecting career, I was happy just finding a Luger. Then my search advanced to finding a Luger with matching mags. Then I advanced to finding holsters for my Lugers. On artlleries, I want the manufacturers date to match the guns chamber date. But remember, I regard myself as a collector and not a dealer. So I know that the manufactures date does not have to match the guns chamber date.

My kick in the pants was on the second artillery (and P-08) that ever I bought. This dealer had an Erfurt rig for sale for $1600. I only had $1000 with me. So I only took the Erfurt artillery. It was a beautiful artillery but someone had left it in a damp environment and, while it didn't have any pitting, it did have light freckling rust over 100% of the outside surface. I cleaned the freckling rust off but I now had an artillery with zero bluing. It had a magnificent bore though. Some other lucky soul got the holster rig.

But, in those days, a $1000 was a lot of money for an artillery and I didn't know of the value of an original artillery holster. I had some "expert (?)" friends that looked over the gun. But I now know that they weren't really experts and that they only knew a little more than me. Even after 15 years of collecting with most of those years looking for artilleries, I still don't regard myself as an expert. There are just too many people around, especially on this and Jan Stills forum, who can run circles around me.
Big Norm