Trouble locating no suffix letter Spreewerk P.38

[paddywonka]

Wondering if anyone knows why it is hard to find a no letter suffix cyq P.38 pistol for sale? While I have always had at least one or two P.38 pistols nearly all my life, they were always as shooters. WW2, post war P.38s and P1 pistols, as well as P4, P5s even a P5 Compact as my daily carry, only recently in the past few years have I started to collect WW2 P.38 pistols. From what I have learned here, it is better to narrow a collection to a certain type or era. Decided to go with early regular production P.38s, no letter suffix. Passing on quite a few letter pistols in search of nice no suffix ones. So far have a byf 42, ac 41 & 42, byf 44 Police L, all no letter suffix. However my cyq is 6021a, the lowest clean early cyq I was able to find. For some reason seems to be a lot of late & very late Spreewerk available, but it was hard to find one lower than a letter "i". Maybe all early ones went east, and the vet bring backs from France were later ones? How ever the nice no letter cyq has evaded me. Are the early better condition ones being kept because they are fewer? Must admit even my early extractor, unreinforced trigger area frame cyq has a quite a bit fewer machine marks then most photos I have observed. Just wondering where are they?

[Sarge]

Well, for starts you should remember that there were only 9999 no letter cyq P.38s made as is the case with all other WW 2 German firearms.

Since these were made at the height of the ruskie invasion it is very likely that many, if not most, went east and are still there.

My cyq guns are scattered from f thru z. Guess I should look for some of the earlier letters!
Sarge

[paddywonka]

You are probably correct that many , if not most were lost in the East. What has stumped me is I do have 3 nice Walther ac code P.38s in three different years with no letter suffix, as well as a Mauser byf no letter. While they were not easy to find, they were not that hard either. Even the Russian capture cyq pistols I have seen are also " i'' or later suffixes. When I set my sights on clean, no letter P.38 pistols to collect, I just never would have thought a nice Spreewerk example would be so hard to find. What my searching has uncovered for me, is a new interest in cyq pistols I did not have before. Think they are unappreciated gems in the rough. They are the least produced in total numbers of the 3 manufacturers, who knows maybe one day they will be more desirable, the way the Japanese last ditch rifles are becoming now.

[severin]

Some manufactures reset the serial numbers at the beginning of each year (Walther and Waffenwerke Brunn for example) hence you will find no suffix serials for every year of production. Others just kept going until they got to 9999z and started over again (most manufacturers) including Spreewerk. Spreewerk at 9999z went to a1 suffix followed by A0 prefix.

Jonathan.