Exotic Luger with Unrelieved Frame


Be sure to watch the Luger’s video

Hey guys and welcome to another Walk-in Wednesday and this one's going to be a quickie because I don't have much to say about this. I already did a full video on Luger's and all the variations including some early variations. There's a link below if you want to take a look at that. https://youtu.be/hnmlS2IiPZM. Those of you who already saw that video recognize this right away. 

Quick Overview of the 1900 Model 

Quick Overview of the 1900 Model

Let's do a quick overview. This is an early Luger, extended barrel, happens to be in .30 caliber. So with this crest, we know it's Swiss. We also know that it has the grip safety and a dish toggle. Dish toggle would mean that it has to be from 1900. So this is a model 1900 and actually what makes this special and what I want to talk about on this particular gun, is the serial number is 436 which means it was very very early among the first 400 made.

Ready to learn something new?

Ready to learn something new

Now, what a lot of you don't know and the reason I’m doing this video is I'm willing to bet that most of you out there are going to learn something new today. Because when I first got this in I learned something new. Turns out the earliest Lugers were un-relieved frames. Now that probably means absolutely nothing to most of you. But it means they're very rare. The un-relieved frame, I’ll show you in a minute what that means, but un-relieved just meant that it used a different magazine and let me show you real quickly how you can tell the difference.

The 1914 Military Luger

The 1914 Military Luger

Here I have a really nice 1914, you can see the date, 1914 Military Luger. So it was issued right at the start of World War I, beautiful condition, just a great gun. And if I take the magazine out, and again most of you never knew this, but let's hold these frames side by side. So if we look down the frame where the magazine slides in, you will see on the 1900 Swiss that it is unrelieved or I’ll call it un-slotted. I like the term un-slotted because there's no slot for the magazine, whereas on the 1914 you will see this slot.


The Luger is Slotted

The Luger is Slotted

Now if you own a Luger and you look in this location I guarantee that 99.999% are going to have that slot. Because not only did they not slot them for about the first 600, so they were all Swiss Lugers because the first contract that DWM got was for the Swiss Luger. They made a couple commercials as well. If you watch my earlier video about the development of the Luger you'll know that DWM first made a bore short which was a big, odd-looking gun. They actually sent some to the Swiss to test out for the army and they gave feedback to DWM. Basically said it's too big and too awkward.

Good thing Georg Luger agreed to make the changes

Good thing Georg Luger agreed to make the changes

So they gave them feedback and Mr Borchardt was highly offended, refused to make any changes but Georg Luger stepped up and said I think I can make those changes. So he saw a nice opportunity and he grabbed it. So he then developed what we now have as the model 1900 Luger and the Swiss signed a contract, ordered a number of them. And so the earliest Luger's went to the Swiss.

Un-relieved Luger was up for auction

Un-relieved Luger was up for auction

In fact a recent auction up in Maine, they had Luger number 6. It was an early Swiss, un-relieved Luger number six making it very very rare. Now they had an estimate of over $100,000, it didn't reach the reserve, so I believe it is still unsold and probably available if you want to track it down.

This gun is an early Swiss un-relieved too

But this is like it, it is early Swiss un-relieved. So the un-relieved parts or the un-slotted, those of you who know Swiss, this is a Swiss magazine because it has the disk and it has a flat button. So you look at this flat button, it's not real remarkable until you hold another magazine. Let's put one side by side. You can see that the standard mag is a little bit of an elevated button. So the early one was only made for the un-relieved or un-slotted and this is the only magazine that will fit. So again they only made the first few hundred of them and let's take a look at the fit. 

Let’s examine the Swiss Luger frame 

Let’s examine the Swiss Luger frame

Again let's go back and take a look at this Swiss Luger frame. This is the flat button and you can see it just slides in very easily and works exactly as it should. However, let's take a standard Luger magazine and try to put that in and you can see right away it doesn't fit. So what was wrong with keeping the flat button? Well, the problem is it was too weak. It would break and it was hard to load. If you have a loading tool, you know the loading tool fits over there and clips on to help with the loading of the ammunition. However, there's not enough of a lip here it's very hard to load. So they found this was awkward, not very strong and hard to load and therefore they modified to this magazine. From that point on they only made these elevated buttons which won't fit in the gun. Therefore the next consequence of that was most of these, and I don't know the exact number but most of these were sent back to the factory and they were slotted. In other words, they cut a slot into it. Even though you find a gun number 50 and I'm just using that as a random example, it may be slotted although it started out un-slotted or un-relieved. 


Imagine finding a Swiss Luger in mint condition!

Imagine finding a Swiss Luger in mint condition

So when you find one in the original condition you can imagine if you're a Colt collector or a Winchester collector and they had an early feature that was later modified and you found one of the earliest ones, still unmodified, that is extremely rare and extremely valuable. So when you see a gun like this, this beautiful Swiss Luger 1900, you might come up with an estimated value which I would say $5,500 - $6,500 for this early beautiful Swiss but when you add the fact that it has the un-relieved or un-slotted, the original configuration, when you add that on it can double the price, sometimes even triple the price.

Running into a treasure!

Running into a treasure

So that was all news to me. And I hope that you learned something new today. It's kind of neat if you're out looking at a gun show and you see one of these on the table and let's say it's about $5,000 and you're smart so you take a look at the bottom. And if it's among the first 600 made, so serial number within the first 600 and it is un-slotted, then you found yourself a treasure. For many of you, that kind of trivia is just unimportant. You'll probably never have an opportunity to buy one of these but others, you learn something new today and that's what makes this channel worthwhile.

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