Walther PPK - pre war with providence

[Capt. Bill]

A friend of mine has a Walther PPK 7.62mm @75% condition in it's original leather case - 90% condition-with magazine & a signed & stamped letter from US Armed Forces European Command - dated February 14,1946, documenting this pistols serial #208011K, allowing his uncle to bring it back home. Can anyone tell me the date this pistol was made & what it's worth. I know the documented providence adds value, buy how much??

[Bill DeShivs]

1946 would not be pre-war.
Without good, clear pictures no one can tell you much about it.
While it may look nice, the gun could have been refinished, etc.

[Jim Watson]

As I read, it was confiscated by American Occupation Gun Control and given out as a souvenir in 1946. It was obviously manufactured earlier, maybe much earlier. I could not find a chart of Walther serial numbers. We probably dropped a bomb on their file cabinet.

[carguychris]

Originally Posted by Jim Watson

I could not find a chart of Walther serial numbers. We probably dropped a bomb on their file cabinet.

FWIW and IIRC, Zella-Mehlis was initially occupied by the Americans, but was handed over to the Soviets when the state of Thuringia became part of the Soviet Occupation Zone (it later became part of the GDR). Walther's files were reportedly carted away by the Red Army, and their subsequent fate remains a mystery.

That said, there are Walther historians who have roughly estimated the manufacture dates of many prewar and wartime Walthers based on documented shipping or purchase dates of certain pistols. However, I don't have any of this documentation handy. Hopefully someone who does will stop by; otherwise, I suggest cross-posting this question to http://www.waltherforums.com/forum/.

[PSP]

Built in 1939 according to the Walther forum.

War time PPKs go for around $1000 and up. Condition counts of course. Keep the provenance.

[Capt. Bill]

Thanks PSK- I thought it maybe was late 1930's.

[James K]

The 1939 manufacture date is correct. But the pistol was probably a wartime "capture", either by the soldier named on the letter or by some other soldier who passed the gun on. In spite of "war stories", such captures were not always in combat, though pistols were more likely to be kept by the American soldier than rifles, most of which came out of depots or piles of captured arms when the solider was due to "rotate" to the States. Guns were also taken from German homes, from police, from collectors, and so on. Hundreds of thousands of civilian guns were seized and/or destroyed; the Second Amendment did not apply to citizens of the Third Reich.

That letter was not needed until an American soldier wanted to bring the gun back to the States, at which time he applied for a letter to get the gun past US customs which was the reason for it. (No, GI's didn't call "time out" in combat and take captured materiel to the CO to get a letter; many guns lettered to a given soldier had been passed around for months before someone wanted to bring the gun back and got a letter.)

I need not point out that when the GI proudly displayed his "capture gun" to his friends, he usually added modestly that he had personally taken it from at least a field marshal, if not Hitler or Goring.

Jim