Luger Expert Wanted

[.455 Webley]

After years of dreaming and saving i recently bought a nice quality Luger from a reputable dealer. Its an early post WWI commercial gun with police unit markings. However its serial number is rather low and has no prefix like i would expect. Anyone here a student of the Luger or know someone who is? Or could you point me to a book with good coverage of early post WWI Lugers that wont cost me the same as a house payment?

Thanks for your time any any advice you can offer.

.455

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Hi Mr. Webley, I don't bill myself as an expert on Lugers, but I do own several and have several books on the subject. Since I've owned the books for years I can't give current sources for them or what they might cost, and I suspect that they're mostly long out of print. But you might find them for sale on line as used books at reasonable prices. They are: The Luger Pistol, Fred A. Datig, Lugers At Random, Charles Kenyon, Jr., Monograph II: The German Military Pistols 1904-1930, Fred A. Datig; German Handguns, Ian V. Hogg; German Pistols and Holsters 1934-1945, Lt. Col. Robert D. Whittington III.

As for your individual Luger, photos always help. I'm not sure what you mean that your pistol is a post WW I commercial. My understanding of post WW I commercial Lugers is that most of them were reworked WW I guns that were sold on the commercial market to raise badly needed cash. Many of them were converted to 7.65mm (.30 Cal.) and exported to the U.S. They can be found with various dates on the receiver rings, but many were scrubbed of dates. Usually a Luger with police markings will date to pre-WW I. It is a fascinating field of weaponology, as Lugers can be found with a great variety of military unit markings and the logos of several manufacturers. I have a very early one that is police marked and was manufactured without a hold open device, then apparently taken and re-issued to a hospital train unit--and somehow it got over here, no doubt brought home by a G.I. Anyway, congratulations on your acquisition, and if you get the opportunity to post some detailed photos I'm sure someone can tell you exactly what you have.

Oh--as for the serial numbers, in general they ran in series of 9999 units with a suffix lower case letter. For example: 1 a all the way to 9999 a, then started over with 1 b. It is my understanding that they went through the entire alphabet 3 or 4 times. I own DWM 4 m, but there are (or were) probably at least 3 more out there with the same serial number. I have seen post WW I commercial imports without a suffix after the serial number, and I assume that it may have been removed; or perhaps the entire number and suffix were removed and the guns completely renumbered. As you probably know, Lugers originally had almost every part in the pistol stamped with the last two numbers of the four digit serial number, and in the case of some commercial Lugers the numbers may have been removed and re-stamped to make the numbers of re-fitted parts agree, or to have no numbers at all except the main serial number. So much to learn about Lugers!

[.455 Webley]

Thank you for the list of useful texts on the subject. My eyes will be pealed whenever I run into the book guy at a gun show, and every gun show seems to have a book guy.

As for my Luger it is a 9mm, 1920 dated pistol and that looks to be the date of manufacture rather than the "1920" government property mark that shows up on a lot of these. No sign of scrubbed marks or over stamps. It only has commercial proofs and a 3 digit serial number. The last two numbers show up on every single part on the gun. Its police unit mark shows it was in a part of eastern Germany that had a lot of small uprisings and ethnic strife in the post WWI era and the police invested in a lot of arms at that time. The lack of a letter in the serial number makes things interesting. Also she has no import mark so she must have been a GI bring back.

Its an interesting puzzle and i would love to put together some of the pieces over time. No matter what the story is she looks good and shoots great with the 9mm loads i was already making and has been 100% reliable. I may ask Mrs. 455 for help with a photograph she is the household shutter bug and computer whiz.

[17nut]

Take a look here: http://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=29036
You can buy the CD alone for around $30 and that is a steal!
That is the most info on Parabellum pistols in one place you will ever find.

[Bent Ramrod]

Not an expert, but a friend collected Lugers for a while and used to lecture me about them as we drove to Gun Shows.

If I recall, yours is what is known as a “1920 Commercial” version. Germany made them up from parts from the pistols and spares left over from WWI. Many were exported in order to raise money to pay war reparations. The Treaty Of Versailles limited the barrel length to 4” in all cases, and I believe they had to have “Made in Germany” stamped on them, if they were exported. (Yours being used in the country would not have to have this stamping.) The serial numbers and styles of parts on the assembled pistols could be any random combination. HTH.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I think only the military pistols were limited to four digit serial numbers. I have seen commercial lugers with five digit numbers. All the commercial Lugers I have seen were 30 cal. As a side note, there was no such thing as a luger pistol in Germany. That was a registered trade name owned by the firm Of Stogers. They had the sole distribution rights in the US. In Germany they were referred to as PO8. Luger did not invent the pistol, Hugo Borchardt did, Luger was hired to improve it and he did a very good job. Someone told you to go to the Luger forum. That was great advice.

[17nut]

Well to nitpick they are called Parabellum pistols and always has been!
Para= against, Bellum= war

The 1900 model that the Swiss adopted was'nt called a P08 neither the 1901 or 1904 models the German Navy adopted and they were all chambered for the 7,65x21 Parabellum round.
The P08 came around because the German Army wanted a pistol of a bigger caliber and the 9mm or 9x19 was all that the magazine and action could handle, except for a barrel change the pistols are the same.
So tecnically no 7.65x21 Parabellum is a P08 because it's the wrong caliber.
All P08's are Parabellums but not all Parabellums are P08's.

DWM started Parabellum production at 0 in 1900 and went to @92000 then started with letter + 1-9999 series in 1921.

The Versailles treaty dictated amongst many things that no civilian pistol be made in military calibers, no barrels longer than 100mm and all export guns be marked "GERMANY".

[Wayne Smith]

I believe it's Para - prepare and Bellum - war - thus prepare for war, not 'against war'.

[Thin Man]

The topic of serial numbers being repeated takes me back to a memory. Years ago I was a LEO and was asked to determine whether a specific Luger pistol was or was not stolen. The challenge came from our dispatch center. An officer had discovered a Luger in the course of an investigation and provided the center with the serial number. When the dispatcher entered the make as "Luger" and serial number into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, they got back four (4) hits on just that data. From those responses we believed that on four different occasions some individual had reported a Luger with the same serial number as having been stolen from them. Whatta mess. It was easy for me to determine that the pistol in our custody was not reported stolen. The solution was simple. All of the Lugers reported stolen were claimed to be 9mm, while the example in hand was a 7.65 mm. Case closed.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I should have clarified what I was referring to as the P08. The 9MM Luger was called that because the German Army adopted it as their side arm that year just as the Browning design is called the 1911.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Thin Man -- I had an experience like that. Years ago when I was a LEO I had access to the teletype system and ran my entire collection to see what would come up. Three of my Lugers had been reported stolen by serial no., but I had bills of sale showing that I had purchased them prior to the reported thefts. That was when I learned about the serial numbering system of Lugers. Unfortunately, so many people don't understand how the system worked, and report the stolen serial number as xxxx without the suffix, not realizing that it is part of the number.