Doug: Thank you much for contributing your serial numbers to the ongoing study. Intriguingly, of the several hundred Gew 88 serial numbers recorded thus far, 1895 Spandaus are rather far and few between. Of the 10 rifles for this year, the highest serial to date is 9389l (L).

butler: Thank you kindly! These have been duely noted and all numbers are greatly appreciated!

C96Guy: Great question! I have not yet done an arsenal by arsenal and year by year comparison of the previous compilation with the list I've been working on this past year so I cannot provide any precise figures at this time. One thing that has jumped up at me is finding a clear photograph of an 1899 (!) Amberg Gew 88 showing how late this model was produced at that arsenal. I also recall seeing a couple of additional "high" numbers from other arsenals. All in all, I think the previous aggregate production figure will increase slightly (perhaps by 100,000 rifles) but that is purely a guess at this time and subject to change.

Not surprisingly, accumulating serial numbers is a slow and all too often "hit or miss" proposition. Some arsenals and years are well represented whereas others show up much less frequently -- if at all. A working assumption in this effort is that all rifles were sequentially numbered at each arsenal in each production year which further presumes that all (or at least many) lower case suffixes should be present in a large enough sample. I'm not necessarily convinced that this is the case when glancing at a very small number of Kar 88 and Gew 91 serial numbers I have separately collected. For example, one forum member kindly reported to me an 1893 Erfurt Kar 88 with serial number 6911g which makes me wonder if these were separately serial numbered or -- importantly -- were built on receivers pulled out of the Gew 88 parts bins. Saying that the carbines were "few in number" is rather vague and I have not seen any "authoritative" statements on exactly how many of these were produced at facilities completely removed from Haenel and Schilling.

Another "monkey wrench in the gearbox of progress" in determining total Gew 88 production is that some collectors have noted that the Germans did NOT use both "i" and "j" suffixes on their rifles (hence a full year's production to the end of the "z" series of numbers would be 10,000 less rifles). While I can say for a fact that both "i" and "j" suffixes have been reported to me, I obviously cannot verify that those folks who reported these correctly read the Fraktur lettering (which admittedly can seem like a very strange language to those of us accustomed to Latin letters).

One could literally spend years trying to accumulate an ever larger sample of numbers and still end up with a relatively small universe of serial numbers in light of so many of these rifles having been destroyed or otherwise scattered who knows where through the years. While I would certainly like to have a broader (and, hopefully, firmer) basis for reporting on Gew 88 production, there comes a point of ever diminishing returns on how many numbers are available for inspection and/or reported. So to address your question, I'm currently trying to "fill in some blanks" regarding the range of serial numbers used in each production year (and there is no lack of such blanks) and hope that I will be in the position next year to prepare an update to the previous study. As much as we might like to have access to a truly comprehensive data base, the realities of life indicate that this is an unattainable goal and sometimes the best we can do is to work within the limitations of the information we have.