[Doubs]

One senario - and it's purely speculation - is that a quantity of 1917 receivers were sent to be serial numbered in early 1918 and the serial numbers were a continuation of the 1918 serial number sequence but also a duplicate of an existing 1917 Luger; i.e., TWO mistakes that were both corrected by the overstamp.

 

[Doubs]

I don't want to be a killjoy but IMO the 8 over the 7 in the date is not factory. It's too thick and it's misaligned. I also have to ask why they made it to more than 5000 units before using a 1917 receiver. It's something of a mystery that may never have a satisfactory answer.

 

[Doubs]

if the Luger was made in 1917 as the original receiver date suggests it has to be a first month of 1917 as there is no letter block. If we agree on that then we must also agree that this would be one of the rarest variants of an LP-08 known because it omits both the front and rear sight fine tune adjustments almost a year prior to any other example known with both of these features omitted and many months prior to either feature being omitted. Generally the front sight adjustment was the first dropped and then later the rear adjustment was dropped very late in 1917……sometimes and usually but not always!

Look at the overstamped example in Mopar's link. It's roughly 12,000 serial numbers later and probably also a January, 1917 production if made in 1917. I have no explaination why they exist but I find it highly unlikely that DWM would overlook receivers that were date stamped and ready for assembly. Could they be Erfurt receivers supplied to DWM for final assembly? It's also been discussed here that production of a given year may have actually continued into the new year in order to finsh date stamped receivers of the previous year. If it was standard practice to overstamp the date then I think we would have seen many more examples. I don't know why it was done, to how many or by whom but I'd love to know the answer.