Lugers! Elegant Firearms From A Less Civilized Age

I've been chasing P.08 Lugers on auction sites for awhile now, and they keep getting bid out of my reach.  

I try to decide what amount I'm willing to buy for an item for at an auction and then not go over once decided no matter what.  That way I don't get auction fever and thus I end up with no regrets or as the kids say today - no regerts.

So I bid what I bid, which was kinda on the lowish side, and the auction came around.

And - I was away from my computer at the time they came around, and it turned out I had won two of them.  I was not expecting that.  Oops, that was not intended.

They arrived, interestingly enough shipped by the auction house via Priority Mail.  The Post Office dumped the box at the door, and claimed on the delivery tracking that it had been signed for by a resident and it had not.  Nice.

Well I opened the package and got to look closely at what I had won.

One is a World War One Era Luger, manufactured by Erfurt and dated 1912, complete with a German Imperial crown.

 
 

The other is a World War Two Era Mauser manufactured Luger marked S/42 and dated 1938

 

Both are all matching numbers except the magazines.

In short for what I bid, I likely got a screaming good deal on them.

The toggle action is really rather neat.  Take-down and reassembly is more involved and requires a fair bit more fiddling than with a modern pistol, but not bad once you get the hang of it.

I disassembled them both. Cleaned and lubricated them.  Both came quite clean but dry from the auction house, which was nice.  A little lubrication and they move along very smoothly.  Both have really nice triggers, I was quite impressed with how nice the triggers feel.

So I took them to the range today and met up with Tosh.  First time for both of us to ever fire a Luger.  Started with a single round loading from the magazines, then two in the magazines to test firing and feeding.  No problems so we then tried five rounds, and finally went on to full magazines.

Both Lugers functioned absolutely flawlessly.

The Lugers really sit nicely in the hand.  Recoil is practically non-existent, allowing for very fast shooting.  Sights are certainly small but usable and line up on target very quickly. The Luger toggle action is ridiculously cool.

For fun with our last 5 rounds each we did a 3x2 drill with them, from a low ready and on safe, as I have no holster that fits the Luger.

Not bad, a clean run in 3.24 for a first time out for a pistol made in 1912.

Tosh tried it with the 1938 Luger.

3.44 with a miss outside the head box. 

Two very nice pieces of working military history.