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Old 07-08-2014, 08:23 PM
Nyles Nyles is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 921
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Well, haven't posted too much here lately, but got some new stuff that may be of interest.



First was a WW1 Ottoman Military Police contract FN Browning 1903 pistol in 9mm Browning Long, with all the original Ottoman markings. The Ottoman Empire never went for handguns in a big way, their only purchases in the era were 1000 Mauser C/96s for the Navy, and 1000 of these Brownings for the Military Police. This one isn't in awesome shape, but few of these are - they were used hard and didn't get a ton of attention from armorers after WW1 when they became obsolete.



Then I got a French issued, Spanish made Cordero revolver. The French purchases of Ruby pistols during WW1 in well known, what's less known is that they were also buying anything the Spanish arms making industry could turn out in their standard 8mm revolver cartridge. There are dozens of different makers, primarily copies of S&W and Colt designs, and quality tends to vary between "I can't believe it's not a real S&W" to "I can't believe it's not a cap gun". This one is a pretty much straight copy of a Colt Police Positive Special, and is definitely one of the best quality examples.



Most recently I won at auction a Savage 1907 in .380, made around late 1914 / early 1915. Very cool gun, very unique design - a double stack striker fired pocket auto with a loaded chamber indicator in 1907! Although the French and Portuguese used these in WW1 they were all in .32 ACP, this one being clearly a commercial example (although it has British import proofs so it could conceivably have been carried as a backup by a British officer during the war), but it definitely fits into my gangster era collection.



In terms of long guns, I picked up a French Tabatiere Mle 1867 rifle, a Mle 1842 musket or Mle 1853 rifle converted to breech loading using the Snider breech system. Basically the French equivalent to a Snider-Enfield or early Springfield-Allin conversion. It fires a huge 17 x 32mm round (basically a short shotgun slug), and was used to arm second line troops during the Franco-Prussian War due to the shortages of Chassepot needle rifles.
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