Notes from the gun shop...

Well, yesterday was slow but full of wonderful guns and a couple of surprises...

First thing upon entering the store I see this 1917 DWM Artillery Luger with "snail" drum magazine.  A local fellow is supposed to come into the store today to look at it and the next interesting piece.  As you might know the 32-round "snail" drum magazines are pretty pricey.

The Luger pistol was accepted by the German Navy in 1904. The Navy model had a 6 inch barrel and a two position (100/200 metre) rear sight. This version is known as Pistole 04. The German Army adopted the Luger in 1908 to replace the Reichsrevolver in front-line service. The Pistole 08 (or P.08) had a 4-inch barrel and was chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum.

The Lange (long) Pistole (pistol) 08 (Model 1908) or Artillery Luger is a pistol/ carbine for use by German artillerymen as a sort of early Personal Defense Weapon. It has an 8 inch barrel, an 8-position tangent rear sight (calibrated to 800 metres) and a shoulder stock with holster. It was sometimes used with a 32-round drum magazine (Trommelmagazin 08). The magazines can sell for as much as $2900 or about the same as the pistol alone!

The next interesting piece was this nickeled Mauser C96.  It particularly interested me, we get the model through the store sometimes, because it appears to be factory nickeled and because it doesn't have the slot for mounting the butt-stock holster.  I didn't know they either nickeled the guns nor that any were sans the slot.  But after some research I'm pretty much convinced this is just an excellent, professional nickel job on a gun that had the stock slot welded up.  The sights are all nickeled and this isn't something that would necessarily be a good thing.   The lack of slot goes back to another time when the existence of the slot might have given some owners the shakes as they didn't and couldn't possess the stock. 

Other guns that had walked in the door were PPK and an engraved S&W M38.

My former comrade in arms Phil H_____ dropped by.  He's on his enforced "sabbatical" until he can go back to work for Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.  He's limited to 1500 hours a year.

We took an S&W 39 apart to make the safety release a bit easier.  The safety detent had gotten some putz in it and was hard to depress.

Otherwise, pretty slow.  All the background checks were on layaways being picked up and other sales seemed flat.  Not a large number of people through the door.