I hadn't commented earlier because by the time I read the thread, much of the information I would have offered had been covered. It is an early 1K. The fret marker on the 9th, the boxwood nut and saddle and the hand-shaped, shorter headstock are all indicators. A very early Style 2M, with no position markers at all, just sold on Ebay. The first few hundred ukuleles made by Martin after 1915 also had serial numbers.
It's often difficult to distinguish between koa and mahogany, especially on the Style 1s (not too much curl on the 1s). At times, Martin ran the grain horizontally on the koa ukes and you can spot that quite easily. At other times they did not. At times they used a dark grain filler or stain on the mahogany ukes, almost a chestnut color. At other times they did not. The consensus about this uke among my Martin-addicted friends is that this one is koa. It sold at a great price for a koa Martin, but at a bit higher price than what I would expect to see a 1M sell for in this economy.
You will often read luthiers' posts on this forum stating that the construction of an ukulele, i.e., the maker, his/her design and technique, is the most significant factor regarding how an ukulele sounds and plays, more so than the wood particularly. While I do find that top woods, like cedar or spruce for instance, do sound appreciably different when compared to mahogany and koa, I think mahogany and koa have similar tonal qualities overall. To my ears, there is not as much difference between a Martin koa ukulele and a mahogany one of the same period as there is between a Martin koa soprano and a Kamaka koa soprano for instance. Martins tend to sound like Martins; Kamakas sound like Kamakas. They are designed differently: the current Kamaka's body is a bit larger, deeper, and the sound hole is wider in diameter. If Kamaka made a mahogany soprano to the same specifications, I believe it would sound a lot like the koa one.
The reason for my qualification, "of the same period," is that I find the earlier Martins, pre-1932 anyway, are a bit louder and punchier than the later ones. The later ones are rounder in tone and have a little more sustain. But even this is a very general assessment, as individual instruments vary a somewhat one from another, although I find Martins to be consistently good, if not great. In fact, the Martins in my collection that sound most alike are a mahogany and a koa of the same style and period.
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