Hello again and thank both of you for the compliments. The comment about being a librarian isn't far off, but it wasn't a former life. I earned a Ph.D. in history but couldn't find a real job; my wife, who was a librarian, became ill and I took care of her until she died; and then went back to school to earn a library degree in an attempt to honor her by continuing her work, but once again couldn't find a real job, so here I am.
Unfortunately, there are no surviving records that indicate who was issued what weapon.... to the best of my knowledge. However, there are lots of folks who are far more knowledgable than me. Probably the current authority on unit marks is Mr. Jeff Noll. He wrote his first book on regimental markings in 1988, so he's been working on them for a while! He released a new edition in 2014 (I believe) and it is available. Check out
http://home.earthlink.net/~nopubl/ The page here with the order form says "sold out," but if you are able to contact him at
[email protected] or Jeff Noll, P.O. Box 7184, Ventura, CA 93006, he might be able to find one for you. They appear on fleabay and amazon from time to time, but they are generally overpriced. Each edition had significant revisions, so don't buy an early edition, thinking that it may be more valuable as some of the book dealers seem to believe. Mr. Noll also has been known to watch the various collector forums and attend military shows, but I didn't see him at the recent OVMS SOS in Louisville.
With regard to the bluing and matching parts, showing it to someone is almost always a good idea. The problem is finding someone who is knowledgable and trustworthy. I've seen self annointed "experts" tell a gun owner that the blueing had been redone just to drive down the price so a friend or employee could buy it! I've also had these other "experts" tell me that the blueing was obviously redone when I've knew for a fact that it wasn't. The "matching" numbers are also a problem these days. A few years ago, I was the unfortunate buyer of a regimentally marked 1915 Erfurt luger.... The problem with that is that there is no such thing; it's a fiction, the creation of a now deceased dealer who took a collector's comment that he wanted a 1915 Erfurt seriously, so he had one made! (In my defense, I was so excited about the regiment that I didn't pay attention to the date.) The I've seen more fakes, frauds and what Jan Still calls "boosted" firearms in the last five years than I did in the previous fifty years combined. You can buy almost all of the steel stamps from dealers in Germany to make any gun "matching" and if you can't do it yourself there are guys out there who are doing it for a living. My latest acquisition, for example, is a 1911 Erfurt that I looked at very very closely and I still can't decide if its real, a fake or simply the sloppy work of the factory at Erfurt.
Well, the point of all of this is to share what little knowledge and insight I might have, so I hope this helps. Thanks again for all of the positive comments from both "farson135" and "Mauser lover". Keep us posted on future developments.