Description

Spreewerk Walther P38 RARE Early number. SN 905 October 1942 Matching numbers on frame and slide. CYQ Stamp Waffenamt 88 stamps. with holster. 9mm Very nice condition. Fully functional. Bore is clean and bright with very good rifling. Has the 5 broken line grips.

Only ~ 8,000 or so Spreewerk NLS pistols were believed to have been manufactured in 1942, and they are usually more difficult to locate then the early byf’42 pistols manufactured by Mauser. This makes the NLS pistols typically the most sought after of all Spreewerk guns.

During WWII, the P.38 was produced by Walther, Mauser, and Spreewerk. To conceal manufacturer identities, each wartime manufacturer used a letter code: ac (Walther); byf (Mauser), and cyq (Spreewerk), followed by the date (e.g.: ac44: Walther 1944 production). Spreewerk did not mark production dates. Pistols were produced in blocks of 10,000 consecutively numbered pistols, with each block having a consecutive letter suffix, to conceal production volume. 1,277,680 P.38s were produced during WWII: 617,585 by Walther in Zella-Mehlis; 372,875 by Mauser in Oberndorf; 287,220 by Spreewerk Grottau.[14] Late in the war,[ambiguous] the Spreewerk (cyq) die broke. Subsequent pistols appear to be marked “cvq” due to the broken die. About 31,400 pistols are so marked. Spreewerk production ended April 1945.[15]