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A few years ago I was at the Tulsa Gun Show. A friend of a dealer friend of mine had a few things for sale on the dealer's table. One item was a Luger tool with a strange marking. The seller said he didn't know if it was real or not and had a reasonable price on it so I bought it. I showed it to a few collectors to get their takes. Some said fake, some said they liked it so I just put it in my collection because I did kind of like it.

Then a couple of years later on a Forum that I suppose no longer exists, a collector in England posted a picture of a stamping that he found on the stock of a Steyr Solothurn that he had just purchased. He nor the dealer he purchased it from knew the stamping was there until he got it home and was doing a detail cleaning. Seeing the the stamp was about the same as on the tool I had, I posted a picture of my tool. Most everyone lambasted me as having a fake. I never, however, claimed that it was real. I just posted the picture for information purposes.

As a result of the posting of the English collector and myself, a collector in Germany posted a picture of the identical marking on the right side of his P.08.

Then, in February 2006, a collector posted a picture of another similiarly marked tool on Jan Still's Luger Forum.

The marking appears to be "SS Wa1". There are very slight differences in the positioning of the markings on metal as opposed to the marking on the wood stock.

I am not claiming that this marking is real. I have an opinion that I will keep to myself.

I do not have the names of the contributors of the Steyr and P.08 pictures. If they are still around and would like credit for them, please EMAIL me. Thanks.