Posted on 09/23/2009 6:19:16 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Wile E Coyote
Supergenius
Well Mister Mag... I think today I finally became a gun collector. That same former Marine that I got the M1A from... has been trying to sell me a pistol for the longest time. I finally caved and bought it from him today. By “finally”, this is the first gun I’ve gotten solely for the collector value instead of being primarily a practical shooter gun.
It is a Colt 1909 .45Colt revolver. Has papers from Colt. Is marked USMC. One of an order of 350 that were shipped to the USMC in September of 1909. It looks to be in good condition to my eye. Barrel is clear and grooves are sharp. No pitting anywhere though the bluing is well worn and a patina has developed. My friend had carried this revolver as his daily sidearm when he was a bush pilot in Alaska for many years. He has documentation of two previous owners, including the Marine that carried it as a sidearm in WW1 doing guard duty on the docks in Seattle.
Pretty cool, I think. Should hold it’s value well in years to come.
He also threw in a Rossi 62sa .22 pump rifle. Also in very good condition. Should be a fun little shooter.
So, all in all, a fun day today. :-)
This is not it, just a pic I found of one of similar vintage. Hard to say if the condition is very similar or not.
It sounds like you have a winner there, with a ton of provenance, if not bluing. Check with Colt to see if their archives can dig up more info your you about that gun. It looks like a great score.
Oh... I have the Colt archives report on the gun.
My only concern is that the grips have been replaced— but obviously a very long time ago. This revolver would have come with checked wood grips, and it says so on the Colt report, but this one has “Colt” logo black bakelite grips. Bakelite grips were available even since this gun was made, but I’m hoping to find out who replaced them. I wonder if it was done by an armorer at the USMC. It may affect the value unfortunately. But it would help to have the full story. Sometimes the story makes all the difference.
I’m not really concerned about the bluing. It shows a life well spent in service. And the patina just adds credibility to the real age of the pistol. It just had it’s 100’th birthday— may I look so good when 100 I reach. :-)
Are you sure the grips aren't really black hard rubber? Bakelite, especially when it came out in the 1920s, was generally brown.
It sounds like the revolver has had only three owners, including you. It seems logical that the first owner replaced the walnut grips, for whatever reason, with the correct new ones. If they were black, they'd be hard rubber, which has been used since at least the 1870s, if not a bit before.
In any case, the replacement seems to be done by or for the original owner.
I thought bakelite came out in about 1906? Perhaps I’ve got that wrong. They are black, and have the “Colt” logo at the top of the grip. I’ll look closer. Maybe you’re right about the hard rubber. When I first handled it, it seemed like bakelite to me, but will check.
Happy New Year to the Hobbit Hole! I will be retiring till 2010.
Happy New Year, LCS! See you on the flip side!
The wood has a high-contrast fiddleback over about 95% of the stock, just fading a bit towards the toe. It also has some nicks and dings (and "issues" with bluing on the barrel) from the raw wood used in their racks. Here's an attempt to give a better view of the walnut.
But since they've discontinued the 452 line (and probably the slightly-more-deluxe 453), I felt this rifle needed a new home just so it could be admired for its gorgeous wood, and the ability to put tiny little holes (.22 starts to look like "big bore") into tiny little groups. It will be getting the same scope and sling as its "big brother", the CZ453. It doesn't have a single-set trigger like the 453 does, so I may look around for an aftermarket target trigger. You can do a lot of adjustments to the stock trigger, but some idiots have set things so light that the rifle could fire by you just touching the bolt handle. That is not the way I do business.
And I must have caught a touch of Sig-phoria after (finally) getting my swine flu shot. Not only did the new magazine followers arrive to complete my upgrade of my three Sig P229 magazines, but three more Sig .22lr magazines arrived in the mail, bringing the total to six, a bit of overkill for a .22 plinker. So I went online and ordered three more upgrade kits, and I'm still trying to figure out when I ordered these mags, since they came directly from Sig, but there was no paperwork with them.
Maybe that's how the magazine fairy works nowadays.
Aw, weren’t you sweet to take that little rifle into your home! ;o)
Evening Winmag - nice CZ, really nice wood. Again, you done good.
And since we’ve made till the East Coasters are ringing in the new year, it counts,
Happy New Years Hobbit Hole -
OB & LSA
Heh, Happy New Year OT, it is brisk out there, glad it’s going to be in the double digits today, also very happy that there is no wind to speak of.
Yesterday I took a walk down to the other end of the street. There was one car parked that looked like it hadn’t been dug out since that first snowfall. It’s on the road and the plows plowed around it. Wonder how long it’s going to take ‘em to get their car out. :)
Airplane II: where the security people are watching para-military guys in fatigues carry machine guns, ammo, grenade launchers, etc. through the metal detector and then jump the gray-haired old lady walking through with a cane.
OB and I tried to help a neighbor get his girlfriend’s car unstuck last night. She had totally buried it, up the engine mounts, and the car was high-centered. He had been digging for a while before we saw him and went out, but alas, we couldn’t get it to budge. Think they came back today with a truck and pulled the dang thing out.
The City didn’t get around to plowing our street until Wednesday, and with the additional snow, it is piled higher at the stop signs than a sedan can see over. The snow plow saw our relatively clean driveway, and pushed about 2 feet of snow into it, just to reduce the amount of snow piled around the stop sigh. Grrr. Now, it is piled on either side of our driveway.
Did you hear that they are expecting another 1-3 inches of snow tomorrow night?
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