Yet another 1930
 

One seller sent me a message saying that he had a "Flatside Commercial" for sale. The gun is a consignment item and the owner got it from his father who passed away 25 years ago. Now he need money so ....

By looking at it, well, it's not a Flatside, but a much more common Model 1930. "Where is your Flatside?" I asked. "This is the one. If you want it, it will be discounted."

The gun's in beautiful shape and mint bore. So I adopted this one.

At 1930s, bare gun without stock like this selling $75. Today's price is actually close to that. Considering inflation, today's price is almost same -- paid $1300 very scarce and very precious US dollars for it. Of course, it's 97% now, not NIB anymore.

Very nice! You must spend a lot of time looking for these excellent examples. :)

Do you think the grips are original? Around here, it is rare to see the lanyard ring still on the Mausers...most are missing, and replaced by keyring (split ring).

I like the M30's. That one has very nice looking mill cutter marks...some machinist put a bit of pride into milling that pistol... :D

Alvin:
Give me (us) a quick course on the different variations of brooms. Flatside is without the lightening mill work?
Thanks;
dju

Flatside started from 1899 Italian Navy Contract, without milling panels on the frame of the gun, but the receiver (barrel extension) still has milled slots on the rail. Without factory record, it's hard to guess why Mauser cancelled those panels, I would assume it's a Italian requirement to reduce the cost a few Marks. After Italian Navy contract, Mauser also made some commercials flatsides. The production returned to milled panels in 1901, not many flatsides were made. Nice flatside is relatively rare in today's market.

Interesting enough, many Italian Navy Contract guns had appeared in China in 1920s. Probably sold to Chinese warlords as surplus. Chinese loved the style of this "Golden Trigger Large Ring Mirror Top Box", reflecting it's strawed trigger, Large Ring Hammer, and Flat frame structure. Probably from Oriental taste, large ring hammer is prettier than small ring hammer. That would explain why Unceta y the CIA started with Small Ring and quickly switched to Large Ring in their Astra 900 series.

Regarding the grip panels, I would think they are original. Around 7~8 nice 1930s have passed though my hands, this one is same as others, unnumbered but with same wood material, same detail, and fits the grip frame perfect. Missing lanyard ring is uncommon on nice broomhandles, except vL&D. Some nice vL&D came without lanyard rings. Please also note the strawing left by heat treatment in the chamber.

Very Nice, thanks for sharing the photos!

Thanks Alvin.

A little bit side talk..... Regarding USD value, the book "China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after WWII" offered a vivid example. In 1945-1946, riding a rickshaw in Beiping cost USD 3 cents. Sixty years later, I visited the same city (now called Beijing), the charge converted to USD was 60 cents. Same service, same city, pure labor work reflects inflation better, because new technology does not help anything here.

Man, that's nice. I'm going to run my older commercial in the Cowboy Action matches, but it will be a pain chasing after the expensive 7.63mm Mauser brass. Maybe a later model 9mm (in worse shape of course) would be a good addition to the fleet.

H

My mind just can not picture a 10-gallon hat [think Hoss Cartwright], plaid shirt + neckerchief, jeans w/leather chaps, Tony Lamas w/spurs...and an M1896 Mauser in a gunslinger rig... :eek:

You simply *must* post a pic of yourself in your Cowboy Action garb...perhaps get your spouse to shoot a pic of you going into action, pistol drawn... ;)

Very nice broomhandle. Thanks for sharing.

Clint Eastwood used one in a cowboy movie once.

When people looking at Broom, it's natural to remember Winston Churchill, Star War, etc. Have you read this book?

Link - Harrison Salisbury's "Long March: The Untold Story (1985)".

Two words - "Joe Kidd"

Clint Eastwood plays Clint, Robert Duval plays the bad guy, and the ever-flexible John Saxon plays the wanna-be Mexican revolutionary leader - hilarious.

I think Clint gets about 100 rounds out of his 10 shot magazine.

Plus it was in "Staring Pancho Villa as Himself", as well as in the real Mexican Revolution, where German weaponry figured prominently, culminating in the famous "Zimmerman Telegram".

I have the belt and holster rig done, butchered up a Chinese replica of a Chinese military holster. I'll have to consider the hat issue, so many choices.

H

I would go with a Pancho Villa punitive expedition campaign hat-uniform

Too bad. Some of those are excellently done.

You might want to consider having a holster made especially for your exhibition. I had a custom high-ride holster made for my Star by one of the newcomers at -

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showforum=29

Reasonable prices, excellent workmanship, quick delivery, and exactly what I wanted - not some big companies idea of what I should have...

To get back to the Mauser...A gunfighter rig made to fit the Mauser would be an eyeball-expander... :D

maybe even a 2-gun rig, separate L & R crossed rigs, with M96's blazing away...Mwahahahaha... :roflmao:

I actually have one of those, since you mention it...

H

Next time to Beijing, I will carry some holsters back selling to cover my ticket cost. Dirty cheap stuffs. Those leather fits OK in general. The replica wood holster is poorly made low quality stuff, everything that can go wrong goes wrong, even blind guys can tell they are fake. But those have specific market -- I sold some in the past, easily went $80-$100 per piece. Nowadays, probably harder to be profitable, too many people selling those items on the market.

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[Edit] Also thought about making a bunch of bolt stop and selling them for range guns. I saw people listing those $80 on ebay. $80 was probably too high to sell. But $20-$30 should have a small market. Cost was $1. But my friend did not like the idea -- if it fails and bolt flies out hitting shooter's face .... a big liability issue. Holster is safe. At most it does not fit well and the gun swims inside.

Here are some photos of the Mauser rig for Cowboy Action Shooting:

http://www.jacobsbklaw.com/powerwagon/mauser_1_w.jpg

http://www.jacobsbklaw.com/powerwagon/mauser_2_w.jpg

http://www.jacobsbklaw.com/powerwagon/mauser_3_w.jpg

and just so you guys will believe me on the Mexican Revolution thing, here is a Mexican Revolutionary babe with a Luger...

http://www.jacobsbklaw.com/powerwagon/rev_babe.jpg

and I had better get the Mauser to run properly, otherwise, with the 1918 out with a broken ejector, I am left with the Pimpgewehr (this was Herman Goering's personal pistol, naturally):

http://www.jacobsbklaw.com/powerwagon/pimpgun_w.jpg

Four big users of Mauser Selbstlader were China, Latin America, Russia, and Germany (in tens, or even hundreds of thousands scale). There are also smaller players, like Britain, Italy, Turkey, Siam, Middle East, South Africa, etc. The study of Mauser usage in Latin America is very blank so far.

Hi Henry, Thanks for posting that great picture of the Senorita. I understand it's still pretty violent south of the border! Regards, Norm

Alvin,

It took me two weeks to read this topic and check you new purchase.
Ok, it's not a Flatside, but it is a MINT C96. A very late number even for a 30's series.
I once had a set of grips for these latter Brooms and it looked exactly the same as yours.
Congratulations!

Douglas

How could I become a "dealer" of these guns... that's not my original intention..... but I do need $$ for the following one.

Not in hurry, Doug. I do get another flatside. Not in my hand yet. Probably need a few weeks. Will post pictures then.

Is this gun from a member here? Looks like the seller had many Lugers as well....

A commercial flatside made in 1901, in this unbelievable shape with excellent bore. No vL&D.

Hehe @ Pimpgewher :p Those Mausers are beautiful mate, I've always loved those, such an odd design yet so beautiful at the same time. Killer engineering. Those tooling/machining marks always look so pretty to me :D

The C96 variation that I still don't feel comfortable was cabine. Supposed being very rare, and commonly carrying five digit BB value, but there are many of them floating on the market..... say rarer than commonly seen small ring, but still numerically a lot, even my local shop has a cased one, reblued asking 2k. Just by this volume, it's reasonable to guess that most of them were fake.

Who made all those carbines?

Here is some good information on the abundance of carbines issue;

http://www.1896mauser.com/carbines.htm

Thanks alanint. So 16" barrel is a sign. The one that I met in the local store has 16" barrel 1930 style, most likely being a fake. The chamber length was much longer than pistol. Weird piece.

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They received my payment for the flatside. The darn thing was known more than 40 years ago. s/n 30154 on page 72 of System Mauser. Hopefully, the condition did not change much after near half a century. I almost missed this one in the initial scan because the list title did not contain the word "broomhandle".

I'm surprised to see Nemo's old site still around I wonder who is keeping it afloat? By the site information I saw last year the domain should have expired by now...

Hey Alvin perhaps should I post some photos of my meager C96 collection here...

Jerry

Yes. Please. Only a single request: 1024x768 size, and one gun per picture. I am interested in detail. Thanks!

Anything else? Sorry, I'm not a pro photog.....

Jerry

WRONG - The first Flatside started as a German Test Flatside (around serial #145 in January 1899) after the Milled Panel German Cavarly Test Large Ring Hammer.

Mauser 712 is right. German Test guns came a few months before Italian. Thanks for the correction.

#30154 arrived. Spent a little time checked inside and out. No surprise, looks good in general. Obviously, the dealer checked the numbers, because the grip panels were put on carelessly on the frame. It's hard to believe owner could do such a lousy job. Must be dealer..... Easily fixed.

For stupid reason, the camera is lost. ...... have to wait one to come.

"Jerry is Jerry, you know".

Celluar phone can do it. No pro is necessary in this context.

Internal numbers not visible outside: firing pin, bolt lock, magazine floor, disconnector, sear, and grip panels (full).

Externally visible numbers shown below:

Plus proof marks, muzzle, and slot..... that's all key points that I can think of on this thing. All look healthy.

Test fired 10 rounds PRVI from the flatside in range (!!) With all those numbered parts and considering what I paid for it, I ran big risk and could only do so much. With shoulder stock attached, five rounds at 50 yards, 5 rounds at 100 yards, and satified with typical Mauser performance, accurate and reliable. Thanks Lord, nothing was broken in the process.

Originally, I really should stop here. But visited a local gun store today, did not find any guns but saw a book on countertop. Seeing I was flipping pages of the book, the owner said "You could buy it for $3" and raised 3 fingers. "Three", he said.

So I paid $3. It's interesting to see the price of a few guns in 1980s.

Mauser 1910: $225 - $250
Mauser 1934: $250 - $275
Postwar Bolo: $750 - $800
Mauser WTP: $225 - $275
Mauser 1930: $750 - $800
Astra 900: $750 - $800
Interarms Parabellum: $750 - $800
Centennial Hi-Power: $650 - $700
H&K P7: $450 - $460

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[Edit] In preface, author had an interesting paragraph. Here is what he observed in 1985:

History shows that, when the supply of many coveted firearms such as Lugers, Mausers and others dried up nearly two decades back [so, sounds like dried up in 1960s], prices for them skyrocketed. As little as three years ago, a Bolo Mauser pistol in good condition sold for $500 or more, while mint examples commanded more than $1000. I know of one individual who foresaw the supply drying up with the ban on importation of foreign surplus and purchased a dozen Bolo Mausers as an investment [sounds like a very easy task at that time]. At the current going price, he has seen the value of his investment decreased by what he judges is more than $3000 [probably each piece dropped $250]. And with the growing number of importers -- not to mention the huge reservoir of surplus arms still to be released from foreign arsenals and warehouses -- price may well continue to drop for several years.