finally Found! The Rare Revolving Luger!!!!
 

At last found, the Holy Grail of Luger collecting â?? the long rumored never verified until now â?? the Revolving Luger!

Only 2 of these are believed to exist. I now have Serial Number 2. Number 1 was last in possession of Georg Luger himself, and its current whereabouts are unknown. It may no longer exist.

Some history is in order. The possible existence of a revolving Luger was mentioned in a short article in â??American Machinistâ?� by Harold E. Hess published April 6, 1899.

The mid 1890â??s were a time of tremendous innovation and competition in auto loading designs. Ludwig Loewe & Company wanted to make something of the Borchardt but knew itâ??s current design would not compete well with the Mauser C96, the Bergmann and the Mannlicher.

One Colonel G. Vincent Fosbery V.C. was promoting a new and superior autoloader design secretly. Colonel Fosbery was looking to secure financial backing from a major arms manufacturer. It is believed that Luger and Fosbery met in secret in May of 1895.

Luger convinced Fosbery that that autoloaders were too unreliable to ever be picked as a military arm, which is critical to commercial success. We now know that Fosbery abandoned his autoloader and developed an automatic revolver instead. Fosbery patented the autoloading revolver only 3 months after meeting with Luger, and the patent had many similarities to Lugerâ??s prototype revolver. Fosbery sold his "delayed-blowback-sliding-barrel-shroud" design to John Browning for next to nothing.

Luger had prototyped a revolver design to put pressure on Borchardt to redesign his autoloader and to refine a new grip design. It is believed Luger had two prototypes of his revolver, one of which he gave to Fosbery. I believe that Loewe and Luger actually had devised a plan to derail Fosberyâ??s progress and send him down the wrong path.

The Luger Revolver I have now in my possession was found at the Fosbery estate. For some years now I have been in contact with Fosberyâ??s great grandson who is an engineer at a major telecommunications company with offices west of London near Brinkworth. I remember well Rodger Fosbery and I meeting and sealing the deal at a well known Brinkworth pub just three months ago.

The pistol is being shipped to me in parts. I cannot disclose our financial agreement at this time. Suffice to say it will eventually be available at auction. In the mean time, enjoy the only photograph of this rare piece in existence!

I hope you have enjoyed this fascinating piece of Luger history, on this special day,
April First,
2006.

Regards,

--Rev

Rev, depending on the final selling price of your acquisition, I would expect two things to happen; first a prominent pistol expert will write a earth shattering article about this rarest of the rare and second, the long lost sister to your pistol will rise up from a very prominent collection in your part of the country.

Geo, how did you know I have one or two of these! Let me look for it, might be a couple of weeks before I can "find" it :D

No doubt about its lineage after looking at the grip. Congratulations!

Looks like a 22 cal HRWEBLUG to me.
I have the top portion of one of these in front of me.
Ha Ha !
Its Just Like A Good Blended Green and Black Label !!!
Viggo

Wow! Just imagine a revolver with a grip safety AND a magazine release.

Good God, it's a Harrington & Luger... Richardson!!

I just happen to have the three position holster for that pistol. Made by Himmelmann & Grunt dated 1902.:rolleyes:




http://forum.lugerforum.com/lfupload/109_0968_copy1.jpg

It appears to have the Crown/Crown/U proof used by Mauser at a later date..???

Great detective work! Viggo and Ron correctly identified the revolver as being a Harrington & Richardson, not a Webley. I figured the Webley would be just too easy for this group. The WEBLUG is great!

And Pete has correctly identified the proof marks from a later model Mauser - a C96 to be precise, probably from late 1914.

There are two remaining parts that have yet to be identified.

For next year I thought I'd write the exciting story of intrigue and international conspiracies in finding the sister revolver. But sounds like Edward already has it! I knew it had to be in this group somewhere. So, Edward, was it really the lost second Luger in George Eastman's collection?

Cheers,

-- Rev

Hammer from a 1905 Mannlicher?

Regards Ken D

And a Colt 1911 holdopen.

Well you guys got the last parts, the Mannlicher and the 1911.