NORINCO Luger? When did they?

[PT-The Italian Commie]

Check this out: a Luger clone made by NORINCO in China... there was one for sale at an auction in Germany last April, but I sincerely didn't knew they had went out to make a P.08 knockoff... which doesn't seems even that bad for the price it was sold for (800 €).

Does anybody knows when it was made/distributed? I have been longtime interested in the NORINCO production, and never heard of a mass distribution of these. Never made their way to Italy, BTW.

[D Yankee (The Zionist)]

Weird. I'm pretty farmilier with Norinco firearms. Never seen one of these. I desperately want a Norinco Makarov. In some cases, they are more expensive than the original Russian model !!

[PT-The Italian Commie]

Originally Posted by D Yankee (The Zionist)

Weird. I'm pretty farmilier with Norinco firearms. Never seen one of these. I desperately want a Norinco Makarov. In some cases, they are more expensive than the original Russian model !!

My guess is that the NORINCO Luger, or "NP-08" according to some sources, might be a strictly made-for-Germany-only products. They have an importer up there (NORCONIA), that has some pretty big marketplace. Here in Italy, the official NORINCO imports is NUOVA JAGER, which is due to distribute Chinese-made M4 carbines at a very accessible price by the end of the month; pre-orders are already sky-high.

It's a shame for the US shooters not to have any longer access to Chinese-made firearms (that's why you can find Chinese Makarovs only at a very high price... after G.W.B. decided to halt NORINCO imports in the US, those turned pretty rare!); on the other side, this is most probably the reason why their quality has improved. With the US market closed, NORINCO had to turn to the European and Canadian markets for its civilian firearm products; and, down here, quality is oversighted on quantity. Firearms are proof-tested by Governmental approval entities before their import is authorized, in most European countries, including Italy. Although this was originally conceived as a "Gun Control" measure, this pre-emptive testing has helped in keeping our gun racks free from many firearms that are more dangerous for the guy who's holding them than for the target itself (think TEC-9...). As a result, many gunmakers of poor reputation whom wanted to get on the European market had to improve the overall quality and safety level of their products. That's the case of NORINCO. The days of the "Chinese Commie Crap" are long gone; those products are just as good as the American ones, and sometimes even more...