[Guest]

hello,
i am new to this forum and luger pistols. i am trying to getsome information on a luger a friend of mine's father brought back from ww2.its marked 42 on the barrel and byf on the toggle. i understand from this forum that this is a mauser manufactured pistol.it has number 42 marked all over the rest of the gun,including the wood grips.what my question is what is the letter under the serial number mean(d), and what does the stamps on the right side of the action mean.it has three marking there,first one on the left is a eagle with the number 135, the second one is also a eagle with the number 136 under it, and the last one appears to be the german army eagle over the swastica. do these number mean anything? also the magazine is the plastic bottom type with fxo and po8 markings with a eagle and a 37 under it.is this original to the gun? overall the gun looks like its been handled but never fired. thanks for your help

 

[Edward Tinker]

Steve, welcome to the forum!

byf is like you said, the code for Mauser. The 42 throughout the gun would be the seriual number, if it is actually two numbers, that is less common to find, but not rare. For example if it was a 4 digit serial number, like 3442, then just the last two would be on the gun, being a two digit, that is all you see. The letter is called a suffix and showed that the gun was the 50,000th gun produced since serial number 1. Each grouping of guns were made in groups of 10,000, first set was 1, 2, 3, up to 10000 with no suffix, then 1a, etc, till it got to 42d.

The markings on the right are proofs and acceptance markings and you will see these on every gun. Do a search or look in this section and you'll see the same thing.

Ed