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Are these rare, or just uncommon? I've never seen a JP Sauer gun.

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Perhaps a Model B?
Great little rifle, plenty of case hardening showing!

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Calling a pre-WW1 Mauser a “model B” is akin to calling a Colt Navy a Peacemaker. The model designations A, B, E, S and M were created by Mauser post-WW1, in 1922. So they do not apply to pre-WW1 Mauser sporters, let alone the differently shaped pre-1912 ones. In no way it applies to rifles built by others on Mauser actions. Nobody calls a Rigby Mauser a “Mauser Modell A”, though it was made lock, stock and barrel at the Mauser, Oberndorf factory, merely finished by Rigby.
Many design details now deemed typical for the interwar years Mauser rifles were in fact developed by Sauer& Sohn long before WW1 and incorporated into the Mauser offerings only later. Such are the lever release floorplate, the Schnabel foreend tip and ribbed half-octagon barrels. Here is a photo of the earlist Sauer & Sohn Mauser sporter I have seen, maybe the first such rifle:



This rifle in 8x57 is built on an early transitional action as used in the 1896-97 German military trials. The action shows some features of the 98 action soon to come. It already has the gas flange on bolt shroud and the third, safety locking lug, but is still cock on closing. The Mauser commercial serial number under receiver, rear magazine wall and small parts is 17! So the completed rifle is datable to pre-1899.It already has the distintive ribbed Suhl barrel, the lever release floorplate and a Schnabel foreend.

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