any information about this 1917/20 unit marked erfurt would be appreciated

[Ron Wood]

If I may be permitted, I would like to have a slightly different notion than our esteemed friend, Klaus. I am pretty sure he is correct that the directive of 1910 did carry over into the Weimar era, but not as an official practice. I would propose that the date/20 marking was applied by a worker that was familiar with the 1910 directive and had participated in that style of production marking during the last years of WWI. Now as a civilian (civil service?) he had the responsibility to apply the “1920” property mark but erroneously appended the “/20” to the date in the fashion with which he was familiar. This also might infer that the 1917/20 and 1918/20 marked Lugers were all processed by the same individual/depot.

This is of course pure conjecture. Both mine and Klaus’ interpretations are opinions based on our individual experience and study, and therefore understandably slightly different. Such is the nature of heuristic analysis as observational experiences do not always converge on a common opinion (would that it did ). As Klaus has pointed out, there is no documentation in German archives. If he and the combined efforts of Görtz/Sturgess have not produced definitive information, it is probably unlikely that Joshua will be successful in unearthing the “missing link”…but hope springs eternal.
Ron

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by Ron Wood

How bad could I do? After all, I have as much experience as our Commander-in-Chief.

And the one before him, as well...

[Norme]

Jonah might find some consolation in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know".

Regards, Norm

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by Norme

Jonah might find some consolation in the words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

"There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know".

Regards, Norm

I don't know about the OP, but I'm consoled by it! In the movie "Awakenings", a panel of shrinks is trying to assess whether Robert Di Niro's character is competent to take a walk outside, unaccompanied. One asks him,"Are you aware that you're subconsciously (I forget what--some tic, or the like)? To which he replies, "Well, if it's subconscious, I don't really see how I could be aware of it."

[ithacaartist]

Reminiscent of Albert... As some will acknowledge, it is human nature to hang on to the first conclusions to which we jump. It takes an inordinate amount of TNT to supplant existing notions, whatever they are. Although personal experience can lead us down slightly different roads, the beauty of this forum community is its open discussion and the tendency of most issues to reach, at some point, a consensus. The non-existence of hard evidence such as manufacturing and design or bureaucratic records is, at once, what makes this hobby/interest so intriguing and frustrating. Through it all, we're doing the best we can. A truly skeptical (NOT to be confused with cynical) mind is elusive, but a very worthy goal!

I salute the restraint and patience I've seen demonstrated here. You know who you are.

[Don M]

Originally Posted by Ron Wood

If I may be permitted, I would like to have a slightly different notion than our esteemed friend, Klaus. I am pretty sure he is correct that the directive of 1910 did carry over into the Weimar era, but not as an official practice. I would propose that the date/20 marking was applied by a worker that was familiar with the 1910 directive and had participated in that style of production marking during the last years of WWI. Now as a civilian (civil service?) he had the responsibility to apply the “1920” property mark but erroneously appended the “/20” to the date in the fashion with which he was familiar. This also might infer that the 1917/20 and 1918/20 marked Lugers were all processed by the same individual/depot.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I tend to agree more with Klaus. One "fact" we do know is that there were clear and unambiguous instructions about how to apply the 1920 property stamp on P08s and other items. We also have very strong evidence that many of the P08s supplied to the police and Reichswehr in 1920 were assembled from incomplete pistols and parts that were available at war's end. It is my opinion that some of the barrel extensions used probably had already been dated and, lacking any more recent instructions, the 1910 directive was employed to bring the date stamp up to date.

The lack of an official 1920 property stamp on this pistol is consistent with another of my "opinions." Since the intent of the directive to apply the 1920 stamp was to identify property belonging to the government, I believe the 1920 and 1921 chamber date stamps applied to P08s manufactured only for the government in those years was sufficient evidence of government ownership and probably did not warrant an additional stamp. (I realize there are examples of 1920/1920 and 1920/1921 stamped chambers and believe these were, in fact, the result of misinterpretations by armorers.) A similar argument might apply to the 1917/20 and 1918/20 stamps. These too would be found only on government-owned P08s so the 1920 stamp would have been redundant.

[siegersallee]

Gentlemen,

I am impressed with the restraint which you exercised in dealing with the original poster.
In any event, I guess Bob Simpson did not find his luger all that interesting. It now rests at gunbroker .

Some of his claims were interesting: his Gunbroker userid is "RICARDTHE2ND" and he has 40 transactions to his credit.

[tomaustin]

please note that he apparently ripped-off Roadkill's detailed analysis and appended it to his "for sale" gunbroker package......

[klaus 3338]

It is a pity that such insignificant things are discussed in such vehement style and I never wont to step on someone feet.

[Ron Wood]

Do not worry Klaus, you have been a perfect gentleman. We have been discussing opinions and all are valid attempts by reasonable men to explain something that has been lost in history. I enjoy conversation with people that bring their experience and intelligence, thank you for being one of them.
Ron

[Sergio Natali]

Klaus

I think you're absolutley right.

I've got a pair of these so called double doubled dates, but in this cases the 1920 stamps were applied to already dated Army 1918 Erfurt and Army 1918 DWM forming the double dates.

The 1920 stamps generally are only "1920 Reichswer property stamps" related to the 7th August 1920 law concerning the disarming of the people.
Reichswehr stamp was applied by local armories which accounts for its sometimes crude applicaion and variety of sizes as very well explained in Jan Still's volume "WEIMAR LUGERS"

My 2 cents

Sergio

[alanint]

Can it be safely said, then, that Jonah's frustration comes less from an inability to satisfy his passion for history and precise data on his pistol than from a baser pursuit of simoleans?

He is also sticking to what he wanted to hear on the holster, which was clearly debunked as a civilian or private purchase item here.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by alanint

Can it be safely said, then, that Jonah's frustration comes less from an inability to satisfy his passion for history and precise data on his pistol than from a baser pursuit of simoleans?

It has been said here before, by a member wiser than his years would indicate, that 'outsiders' come here to start a thread that they can refer to in their For Sale ad on GB/AA/etc, and pick and choose what 'facts' to include...And then claim that 'the experts on LugerForum have validated it'...

[John Sabato]

Does anyone know the signifigance of the "W" stamp on the inside of the sideplate tang? I don't believe I remember seeing this type of marking in this location before

[jbf22]

Originally Posted by Ron Wood

Gentlemen,
I know there is the temptation to make light of the discussion, but there is a serious intent to try to resolve a puzzling marking. There is a bit of hypocrisy in the posters approach to accepting information provided. For example, he accepted the identification of the holster as German without question because he was told that by Bob Simpson, and that rationale was used to reject the very valid comment by “wlyon” that the holster was never a German issue but likely a private purchase. While I don’t doubt that Bob arrived at his conclusion based on what he observed, since the holster lacks any markings and was not an item of issue by the German Army, he does not know it is genuinely German, only that his expert opinion leads him to that identification. Our “jbf22” chooses not to extend that observational expertise to opinions expressed on this forum. That is OK, and his reluctance must be respected.

Bob showed me in one of his many books a picture of the same holster, I didn't just accept his opinion.

[DavidJayUden]

Over the years, I have seen one, and photos of quite a few more of those shoulder holsters. It would be an interesting project to determine the "who, where, what, when, how and why" there seem to be so many non-issue holsters of the same design, features, color, etc.
dju

[jbf22]

Originally Posted by siegersallee

Gentlemen,

I am impressed with the restraint which you exercised in dealing with the original poster.
In any event, I guess Bob Simpson did not find his luger all that interesting. It now rests at gunbroker .

Some of his claims were interesting: his Gunbroker userid is "RICARDTHE2ND" and he has 40 transactions to his credit.

This item is on Gunbroker with a reserve high enough that it won't sell, simply to obtain information due to the high traffic on that website. I asked a friend to list in hopes of having a collector of sorts run across it and shed some light on it. The information that was added to that auction from this forum was not my doing but the doing of the gentleman that originally posted the ad. If it is of offense to anyone on this forum that it is listed on Gunbroker I'll have the ad taken down as I said it was simply an attempt to obtain more information. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone.

I apologize for being somewhat of an ungracious **** last week, I wasn't in the best mood. I know that seems a **** excuse and I don't assume it will absolve me of any dis-respect nor do I intend it too. Thank you for all your help with information on this firearm. I really do appreciate it, I am not on a quest for money as I have turned down several offers on this firearm, highest one to date was $1700. I only paid $425 for the firearm so I could have easily turned a quick profit if that was my intention.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by jbf22

I apologize for being somewhat of an ungracious **** last week...

It broke up the monotony. At least nobody told you to go buy a book...

[jbf22]

Originally Posted by sheepherder

It broke up the monotony. At least nobody told you to go buy a book...

Since buying this firearm I have purchased and borrowed several books to no avail.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by jbf22

Since buying this firearm I have purchased and borrowed several books to no avail.

Luger books are wonderful for curing insomnia...