Please assess my first P.08

[EddieinNC]

Hello everyone!

I just bought my first Luger on Sunday. I’ve been an avid gun-enthusiast since I was a kid. I’m a collector, regular shooter, NRA pistol instructor, and amateur gunsmith. I bought my first book on Lugers when I was 12 and spent most of the family beach vacation that summer in the hotel room reading it instead of playing in the ocean or at the pool.

Now, I am certain everyone reading will wince when I admit that this purchase was an impulse buy and that I knew from the beginning that I was overpaying. But, it was a unique circumstance:

I had planned a nice family afternoon, but needed to stop by a friend’s gun shop to pick up a holster and case. As he was ringing me up, I looked down and saw the Luger in the display case under his register. I immediately dismissed it as a Stoeger .22, but a few seconds later, my unconscious said, “WAIT! That ain’t a Stoeger!” and I stopped, mid-sentence to give it a closer look. I think I pointed and stammered.

My friend took it out of the case and handed it to me. It looked nice, felt nice, and I noticed all the immediately visible numbers matched (except for the magazine). It had no price tag on it, so I asked, “How much are you asking for it”? To which my friend tersely responded, “It’s not for sale.” and took it away from me. You would have thought I had asked a very rude question about his wife. Then he mumbled, “Well, actually, it belongs to my dad, so if he wanted to sell it, I guess he could.”

At that exact moment, his father was walking by and reiterated, “It’s not for sale” without even pausing on his way to the office.

Just then, my Vietnamese wife said, “Eddie, I talk to you.”

She pulled me across the store, and said, “I see how you look at that one. You have a sweat on your head. If you want, you buy!”

Now, my wife counts every nickel that comes and goes. This was only the third time in our marriage where she actually urged me to buy something, and I knew from the second time, where I waited a day and she reneged (and I lost out on a fine Nazi-stamped FN High-Power), that this offer was only good for about an hour. To be fair, I explained to her that a Luger isn’t quite the same as the Gen. 4 Glock 19 she bought me for Christmas, but she was insistent: if I wanted it, buy it! So I walked back up to my friend and said (very debonaire), “Everything has a price. Seriously, what do you want for it”?

He looked very uncomfortable, but called his dad out of the office. It took a fair amount of convincing to get his dad to see I was serious and tell me a number. The number was very, very high (I watch online auctions pretty regularly), so I presented a more reasonable counter-offer (still high). A good bit of discussion followed. Finally, I offered to pay cash -crisp bills, and he said he would meet me half-way (very high).

My wife and I talked about it. She agreed. We went to the nearest ATM, and came back.

As I raised my hand to shake my friend’s father’s hand (something we still do here in the South to seal a deal), he said, “Oh!” and bent down, opened a cabinet, and pulled out several items. He said, “Here’s the holster that came with it, an extra magazine, and two boxes of circa 1940’s/1950’s ammo” A bit puzzled, I shook his hand and walked away with an unexpected holster, extra magazine, stamped Luger tool, and two boxes of unopened, ancient, red and yellow boxes of Winchester “9 M/M LUGER” ammo.

Now, this has been a pretty long story, and I left out the bits about where they got it from and its alleged history. I’ve taken 46 pics of the pistol, holster, and magazines from every angle -assembled and stripped. I did use the Mac auto-enhance tool, which increases contrast and definition (thus showing flaws the human eye can’t possibly see, but making the color slightly off), and the pictures were taken at high magnification.

Not being a Luger expert, but having extensive experience with other semi-autos, I must say that I am thoroughly impressed by how tight the pistol is. When disassembling, nothing just falls out. Everything fits tightly and moves smoothly. It seems to operate perfectly. The only thing I have done is field-strip it and gently clean with super-high quality S&W lubricant.

Here are some questions I hope the users of this forum can help me with:

Does this pistol fall into the “collector” or “shooter” category? (I am not particularly interested in a dollar value, I just want to know if I get the pleasure of shooting it occasionally at the range, or if it needs to stay locked away.)

What is the deal with the completely unstamped firing pin? As I understand it, all military Lugers have matching stamped firing pins, but, while this one looks exactly like the S/42 pins I have researched online, and is the only component to have any real (still surface) accumulation of rust, I haven’t found any information on unstamped, period firing pins. I assume they are period replacements: i.e., Lt. Schmidt broke his firing pin in 1941 and got the quartermaster to order him a replacement.

What are all the numbers/symbols on the underside of the breach directly behind the barrel?

Does this appear to have been reblued? I have fair experience with pistols, as noted earlier, but I can only claim about an 80% surety that this one has not been reblued at some point: It has the expected holster-wear points and the back and front-strap are worn expectedly, but the bluing on the trigger, breech, barrel, and most of the frame look better than I would expect despite some surface rust. Thoughts?

What is the deal with the magazine that has an “S” at the top, and a “0/37” at the bottom?

I’ve taken a ton of high-res pictures. They can be viewed at my godaddy gallery at http://x.co/i68v

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance,

Eddie