Please don’t buy things that you need to explain

In my opinion the pistol is mostly ok. I think what we see is an attempt at 'bettering out' a broken or mismatched toggle by repairing or replacing the banner and number after filing down the original surface and markings.

I don't think it was done to deceive, just some attempt at restoring a damaged toggle.

So, a fake? No. A poor restoration? Yes.

I think the phrase 'fake' has been used too easily and too casually in the last few years.

There are many, many levels between original and fake. Let's try not to crucify everything but look at them from a more realistic and less condemning viewpoint.

Magazines can come from anywhere and the chances of having original mags have been slim since the P08 emerged. So I never judge a gun by it's magazine. Nor do I really care.

Grips are easily swapped around as well, especially black ones. Good chance that the original black grips on this gun traveled elsewhere to make yet another "black thingemabob".

No. One thing East Germany did was to ditch the sear safety. They also would not 'fix' a toggle marking, just swap it out instead. The GDR did not care about markings.

The magazine is totally irrelevant to the analysis of the pistol, however.

Also be careful to apply army contract habits to a commercial pistol built out of leftovers in another location than the original, more streamlined, P08 line that had to make place for the P38 line.

There were probably a hand full of workers still doing small P08 assembly work in a smaller, separate area, depending on demand. They also probably didn't give a toss about inside marked parts like the sideplate, as long as it worked and the customer paid.

In short: neither the HWaA nor their inspectors had anything to say about commercial gun production.

The thread with Joop's comments is quite old. We know, factual, that Mauser did assemble pistols after the HWaA contract for the P.08 ended in 1942. They did this for small contracts, commercial sales, their own staff and even for local businesses and farmers to have some protection against free roaming forced laborers.

The only thing that was important was that the pistols were servicable and legally proofed.

Since the production line had been dismantled and replaced with the P38 line, a smaller shop was set up for this work.

Don't make the mistake to:
Assume the chamber date matches the production year.
Assume HWaA quality checks were used on these pistols.
Large scale streamlined production was used.

These are pistols built from leftovers by a small team in a small shop with functionality as the main goal. I also doubt Mauser would have fitted the sear safety. That was a police armorer's job.

I totally disagree.

Just a sloppy manual struck 8 imo.

A difference in striking depth can also be caused by differences in surface hardness, hardening. Normal P08 production receivers were numbered with automated numbering dies, with a more consistent placement and depth. This is old school 'large hammer' work.

If you handle large volumes of guns as a dealer, mistakes will happen. It is important how a dealer handles and corrects these mistakes.

The inside number is only interesting on normal P08 HWaA series production and totally irrelevant on the rest.

Stop looking at this gun with P08 contract logic. It wasn't a HWaA contract.

You only need the center.

Lovely Pale Wydow.

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.

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.

During peak production it would have been easier to remove a pistol from the flow than to fix it.

Commercial proofing costs money, so the less reproofing of parts needed, the better.

There are too many of these pistols around to attribute them to dealer toggle swaps. Besides. Wouldn't a dealer use a more appropriate toggle to swap out, creating a more legit military pistol instead of a military-commercial mongrel?

And, having known and worked with Joop for many years, I trust his judgement a bit more than yours. I'm always prepared to look at well documented evidence. But I am not prepared to accept your 'fakes everywhere' opinion without proper evidence.

Oh, well. Some people see fakes everywhere.
This is going around in circles, as usual.

We have an old proverb here about trust issues. I think some in this thread qualify for that proverb without problems.

Waste of my time.

Marc, not commercial bits into military contracts guns, but leftover military contract stuff into commercial guns.

I worked for a company that supplied the military, once in a while a lot was rejected. Mainly because they had to reject stuff in order to look official and in charge to their superiors. The rejected stuff just was redirected to the commercial market.

In the post war Mauser pistols you see similar things. Leftover Interarms contract guns were made into others, other contracts became Interarms versions and quite a few overrun mongrels made it to the commercial market. Remember: if the military (or any other customer) doesn't accept your stuff, it's still yours and you are perfectly free to do as you please with it.

The army, even in Nazi Germany, was a customer, not the owner of Mauser.

So? A toggle consists of 3 parts, of which only one part, the breech block, must legally be proofed. Says nothing about the center or rear toggle parts.