The very highly regarded book The P.38 Pistol by Alexander Krutzek and our friend and client Dietrich Jonke has recently been published in English. I just finished reading it and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in these pistols. It is extremely well laid out and organized and the important information is easy to access. What I really liked about it was that it went straight into the pistol beginning with the initial field tests; no 5 chapters on oddball dead end designs. Prior to this book the only real reference available was by Warren Buxton. The 3 volume set is very detailed but extremely tedious to actually use for research. I do believe this new book will codify P.38 collecting and greatly help in establishing what the true rarities really are.
Most P.38’s variations are fairly common so even with the added collector interest this book will generate I’m not expecting a huge bump in sales, but I do feel that the rarer varieties will surge in value and become much more difficult to obtain. This is certainly a book whose time has come and has been needed for a long time. The book is currently available from Simpson Ltd.