[FrancescoP]

Here is my commercial government model, 1916 built, shipped to russian government probably in the port of Archangels. It went in Italy in 1995 through the german Frankonia importer in horrible conditions and was restored by a friend gunsmith. It is not a "military" gun but it has seen probably more wars than many other: WWI, bolschevic revolution and WWII

 

[Tncrna]

Great looking 1911, with some really nice history!

 

[Doubs]

A fantastic find. Thank you for posting pictures of an historic 1911.

 

[Rich]

I saw one of the later ones of these that had the Cyrillic writing on the left frame on Simpson's website the other day. It was a bit rough but the price was $1,900. and I thought that's not too bad for a scarce old Colt like that. It was posted just before closing time on a Saturday so I contemplated calling them up when they were open for business after the weekend. When I checked the listing a few days later they had added a zero to the price and it's now at $19,000.

Do you ever feel like you are living in the past as far as prices on some of the items we enjoy goes? I do.

 

[Edward Tinker]

It looks very nice
Since you have the colt letter, it might have been better to leave it rough for such a rare documented pistol?

 

[FrancescoP]

It looks very nice
Since you have the colt letter, it might have been better to leave it rough for such a rare documented pistol?

The gun was heavily pitted, with a lot of dings and badly reblued by the soviets. In those years, after the end of the URSS, Frankonia imported a lot of K98, P38 and Parabellums war booty all reblued. It was a common practice in the soviet arsenals. So I thinked that most of the collectible value was gone. Despite the frosted barrel it shoots well.

 

[Doubs]

That bore looks almost exactly like the one that came on my 1927 Argentine pistol. I was amazed when I shot it with 225 grain cast bullets. Unbelievably accurate so 30 years later, it still has that barrel in it.

 

[Douglas_Jr]

That's a very rare bird, even reblued. At least it is not that ugly Russian deep blue finish.
Congrats

 

[treyak]

Neat story. I love how pistols travel. If only they could talk

 

[carl303]

The restoration look good not overly polished like many that you see
Carl