doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Please Help Identify Age of My JP Sauer & Sohn

My 12GA Boxlock shotgun has many characteristics of a prewar gun, such as a flat back action, vertical cocking indicators and more refined wood dimensions, but there is no proof date. Will someone estimate an approximate date of manufacture from the proof marks? Thanks. Allan

With the Nitro on the flats, I'd hazard a guess of post WWI to 1923. Really require the serial number.



Don't recall where I lifted this but Jeff Stephens has a similar list in DGJ.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Sorry I didn't get back sooner. The Serial number is 3103XX.

It should wear a date code then. There looks to be a worn date code w/ a 2 on lower portion of the left flats. Maybe check it with a glass.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Jim Cate's book J.P.Sauer & Sohn SUHL-Waffenstadt lists proofhouse dates for four guns in the 310,xxx range. They are 12/31, 4/32, 8/32 and 12/41.

Special shout-out to @Ellenbr for that serial number list. I can now make sense of mine, since it falls around 1894/1895.

This tale starts over a decade ago, when a buddy and I went up to SARCO to see what they had. There were two wooden barrels of German-made doubles; IIRC all with what appeared to be Israeli police hang tags, most in 12 gauge and all reasonable priced.












I vaguely remember my buddy chose two that had what looked like preWW2 dates on the water tables, so I naively assumed mine was from November 1965 (yeah yeah, that's the original chamber size). Note the 12/70,mm chamber markings left & right, with the subtle SARCO import mark on the right.

It currently travels in a low profile fishing rod bag


So how did a pile of pre-WW2 German-made double-barrels wind up getting confiscated by the Israelis 15-20 years ago?

Good question. Maybe it was one of those DDR (East German) brokered trade deals, like old shotguns for Gaza oranges from Palestine.










 

Story,
Your gun doesn't date to 1894/95. The so called "sole (actually sled) and pick" mark was not used at that time. Your initial assessment of Nov. 1965 proof is actually correct. The above listing of serial numbers would not apply as it is for original JP Sauer and Sons guns and by the time this gun was made the name had been sold and was reorganized in West Germany. The gun is actually a post war, East German one and since it "spoke to you", you got the deal you thought you were getting when you bought it. I don't know how it wound up at SARCO, but here is a possibility. East Germans were allowed to hunt, but the marketable game went to the government (My friend Walter Grass told of his father, who lived in the East Zone, killing a fox. He had to turn the fur over to the government but staked the body down in the creek overnight and ate it the next day, after the running water cleaned it). The guns had to be stored under government control rather than by the hunters. I speculate that SARCO was able to buy some of these guns, maybe left over from hunters who had passed on or were too old to hunt any longer. This is out and out speculation but makes sense to me.
Mike

Well now, Der Ami - thanks for those observations. Here's a pic of the proofs I've annotated from https://www.shotguns.se/html/east_germany.html


However,

You noted
I speculate that SARCO was able to buy some of these guns, maybe left over from hunters who had passed on or were too old to hunt any longer. This is out and out speculation but makes sense to me.

Whereas I wrote
There were two wooden barrels of German-made doubles; IIRC all with what appeared to be Israeli police hang tags, most in 12 gauge and all reasonable priced.


East Germany -> Middle East (vicinity of Israel) -> Israeli Police Custody -> SARCO



State-led Development: The Privileged Linkage between East Germany and Ba'athist Syria, 1965–1972
https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...9651972/46F962CD169CB19D13541765FE17DC1D

PS - prexisting thread https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=509953

Story,
When I said this is out and out speculation, it means I cannot support or justify it. By the same token, my speculation does not preclude the guns going through Syria or anywhere else before getting to Israel.
Mike