Identifying WW1 Era Lugers

[Holmes529]

Hello all,

For the longest time I've been wanting a correct WW1 military Luger. Upon my research, it seemed quite confusing to distinguish between commercial and military, at least for WW1. It's much easier for WW2, at least in my experience. I'd love to get one to go with my G98 some day. Can anyone point me to a good resource for easily identifying military issue WW1 Lugers and their markings?

 

[Philip]

Hello all,

For the longest time I've been wanting a correct WW1 military Luger. Upon my research, it seemed quite confusing to distinguish between commercial and military, at least for WW1. It's much easier for WW2, at least in my experience. I'd love to get one to go with my G98 some day. Can anyone point me to a good resource for easily identifying military issue WW1 Lugers and their markings?

It’s fairly plain cut. An as used WWI Luger will have an Eurfurt Crown marked toggle with a date 1911-1918 on the receiver or a DWM logo on the toggle and a date of 1910-1918 on the receiver. They will not be 1920 property stamped, police modified or post 1918 reworked and those will bear those markings….so these rules apply to as used in WWI with no post wwI changes. There are others but you are not likely to run across them: undated DWM 1st issue and Undated pre war “commercial-military” for officer sales by the army. These require more in depth knowledge of serial numbers and proof and acceptance markings, they are fairly scarce anyway so no real need to bone up them for just a representative WWI Luger