If you can still return this, you absolutely should IMO.
Please don’t buy things that you need to explain
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The most obvious problem is the fake toggle. The SN is obviously fake and the logo could be fake also. A y block commercial gun would not have been fully accepted and proofed by the WaA, and if it were a military gun diverted to the police it wouldn't be a commercial y block serial. Side plate is a mess too.Explain the issues please 😊
What happened IMO, is someone took parts from a standard byf42 and tweaked it into an OrPo gun. They added the OrPo E/L where the E/N would normally go, and added a fake toggle. Something looks off with the frame markings ('y' looks a little too wide) so it may have been faked also. I'm not certain on that.
Save your money for a legit one with no questions. These are not exactly rare.
It is your money, so you can set it on fire if you want to, but this gun is absolutely not original. Simpsons sold you a fake. No question about it.it was expensive. I like it, I don’t know when it was fitted with the Sear safety, but my guess is it was done at a police depot in theater. The proper serial number range and suffix are strong evidence for me and the gun really ooze’s original. As I said not a safe choice but when you get really into it you look for interesting pieces .
Any competent machinist could make those police mods, they are not complicated. And as I said, I strongly suspect the frame has been messed with also.
The toggle is a fake. Period. And the OrPo depot in Berlin did assemble some Lugers out of parts sometime after 1942, but they look nothing like this.The middle toggle logo and the serial do raise questions, but the rest looks perfectly fine from the standpoint of fonts and machine marks. My guess would be a legit late war factory/depot put together gun pressed into police service.
I think I am going to need this claim substantiated. I looked a handful of 1942 P08s (both Banner and Heer), and you are right there do seem to be two dies in use. Differences are very subtle, and honestly the skinny 2 is a little easier to spot than the slightly more open 4. However, I could find Army guns with both variations.Jason, I think the key to solving the 42 dated receiver with the 655 barrel and 135 receiver is really interesting because the 4 used in the 42 date is that of a 2 digit Banner and not a 42 byf. In case you did not know the 4s are completely different in the 42 byfs and the 42 Banners.
Interestingly, byf42 K98k also have two versions of the "byf42" dies that were used at random, a "skinny" and "fat" version. Its the only wartime year where that was a thing.
Thanks for the better pics. I am more confident those SNs are m. They don't look quite right and there is some discoloration underneath.More shots of frame where modifications could have been made
I am baffled that anyone would make excuses for this gun. Everyone accepts that someone removed a 'byf' toggle and replaced with a fake/renumbered Mauser banner toggle. Everyone seems to accept the side plate is a poor attempt to deceive also. The WaA acceptance/military FP doesn't even make sense.
The gun is junk and I'd get my $4000 back.
The magazine is probably the only interesting thing about this example. IMO, its a legit Spandau replacement bottom on a commercial mag. That version of the Su4 acceptance is rare, but I have seen it on K98k parts.The manipulated magazine makes me suspicious of post war fabrication.
Some of Joop's comments are not correct IMO, and 715g is also not original. The E/N on the toggle is a pretty clear sign that someone dropped a (real) Mauser commercial toggle that "matched" into the restored military gun. Perhaps the first toggle in the gun was mismatched, or someone just wanted to make it a "rare" (i.e., more expensive) example.Interesting to read Joop’s comments
The barrel SN would be a better place to start. I think the idea the upper is renumbered (fraudulently, of course) is an interesting one. Having the side plate from 6254 is quite the coincidence.So I am narrowing some focus on the receiver serial number . So there is a theory that that “8” was once a “6” . Is there evidence of this ?
As I've said, 715g is also another fantasy creation. The WaA acceptance and FP indicates this was a complete, accepted, and perfectly ordinary military g block pistol. These were not old parts just sitting on the shelf. There is simply no way a fully HWA accepted and military proof tested receiver gets a E/N toggle. That isn't how things worked at Mauser or anywhere else.This is from an otherwise correct Mauser Luger from earlier production:
Since I don't seem to know all that much, could you explain to me how a completed and fully accepted military g block byf42 ended up with a "matching" E/N proofed commercial toggle? What happened to the original matching, proof tested byf toggle? Why isn't the receiver and barrel commercially proofed like the toggle?You appear to have preciously little knowledge on what Mauser did. Your assumptions are questionable to say the least.
There would have been plenty of partially or fully marked parts and guns left over from earlier contract runs, including rejected ones, in different forms of completeness. And Mauser wasted nothing. Since Mauser owned them, they did whatever they liked with them. The only requirements, by law, were to have a reliable, proofed pistol.
My explanation is very simple (and correct): post war replacement. Some dealer decided to improve his profit margin and dropped a "matching" toggle from a Banner into it. Simple as that. Yours seems to be more convoluted and involves a lot of story-telling and excuses.
So the breech block fails the proof test, but they don't try to replace it? They fail the whole gun, but mark the barrel and receiver a pass before scrapping it? Does that make any sense? On the wartime commercial reworks I have seen (mostly old WW1 era military stuff) the E/N is usually on all of the pressure parts even those already proof tested. But maybe Mauser didn't feel the need to do so. This is all much more complicated than my very simple and far more likely explanation!Toggle: damaged/rejected, removed and tossed away.
The rest: no need to pay for proofing as it is already proofed.
The new toggle: must be proofed by law.
Not a lot of story telling needed. Just basic logic.
Question: suppose I have two 1942 Mausers, one military and one commercial. The last two digits of both guns are matching, so I swap the toggles over. How is the resulting fake "super rare military Banner" any different from 715g? Is there some way to distinguish one of these supposed "reject builds" from my new creation?
The answer is of course not. But we will continue to make excuses for bad guns, I guess.
No, I don't think so. Mauser had repair departments whose sole purpose was to fix parts/guns that didn't pass inspection. In 1940, only about 60% of rifles passed their initial test firing, the rest were returned for various repairs (poorly fit stocks were a common problem). By 1944, when production was at its peak, only about 34% passed. Fixing and analyzing the failures was important since Mauser engineers needed to know if a process somewhere was fouled up or a subcontractor was sending bad parts or bad raw materials. It would be interesting to see the failure rates for pistols, which were probably quite a bit lower, but I assure you they at least tried to fix stuff that failed.During peak production it would have been easier to remove a pistol from the flow than to fix it.
Believe whatever you want, but this is the work of a dealer or collector swapping parts. Its a lazy sort of fakery compared to the more concerted effort to defraud on Jason's example.
German proof law required all of the pressure bearing parts to be tested with a proof load and marked. This included the breech block, so every Mauser commercial will have the Crown/U or the later E/N on the block. Pistols were proof tested once complete, so that toggle was originally part of a commercial pistol.I didn't know that E/N proof marks were ever put on Mauser center toggles... when did that start?
Also mea culpa on 5308i, Mauser did use that square-ish font for a time in 1936.
This would mean that Mauser was commercially proof testing breech blocks by themselves and then setting them on the shelf. I don't think that was how things were done.With a banner center, a commercial proof is most likely.
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