quote:Originally posted by Johnny_Peppers
Charlie,
The HP belongs to a friend of mine whose father was the military procurement officer for the Chinese government in pre-WWII Germany. The pistol with shoulder stock was given to my friend's dad by FN. My friend's dad married a Swiss lady while in Germany, and was raising a family there. When it was apparent that war was at hand, the family left Germany in 1938 and went to Denmark, and then to the United States. Somewhere in the moves the shoulder stock was lost.
The pistol is still in 99% condition with just a few small age spots in the bright finish of the magazine. Approximately how long were the magazines finished "in the white"?
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The magazine in your picture is in much better shape than mine. Mine has seen a fair amount of use.
The Hi-Power in your picture is a pristine piece & it would be nice for my collection. But I do not think the family will give it up and if I were in their place, I would not sell it. Too much family history with it.
It is a shame the stock was lost. I am very curious to know what type of stock it was. (There are two variations of the shoulder stocks, one of which is very rare. The rare one is rarer than most believe. I guess this is because of the fact that there are pictures of the rare shoulder stock which creates the impression that there are many such stocks, when, in fact, the number is small.)
I do not know how long the magazines were finished in the white. I know of a pre war slotted tangent Hi-power that sold at National Gun Day (in Louisille) 15 months ago that had one of those magazines. (I was too late in getting there.) It was a Thai contract piece and was sold by the gentleman who brought it back. He got it out of a warehouse over there.
I know of three other such ('in thewhite') magazines. I have one and I would like to have a few more such magazines since I have the Hi-Powers that would be proper with an 'in the white' a magazine.
So either the number of pistols that came with the 'in the white' magazines was very few or the 'in the white' magazines did not survive over the years. Perhaps both events occured.
There were about 1,100 Oval Ports and the serial number in your picture was 426. That would be 1500 possible magazines. Considering how few are known today, I would doubt that more than 5,000 pistols came with those magazines. I could be way off on these numbers, but if there were 20,000/30,000 magazines, more would have been seen today.
In fact, they are so rare that many Hi-Power collectors have never heard of them.
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