Pre-War Commercial Broomhandle
 

I think that's correct at any rate, but this was a nice enough piece (I had to clean off some minor rust which marred the finish on the right side of the pistol) but I picked this up from a person who wanted to sell it at $800 including two full boxes of Fiocchi ammunition, 6 stripper clips, and a cleaning rod (which may need some clean-up, light though).

I cleaned off the rust and there's some beautiful bright blue, well, blue on the extractor, the safety, and the sight adjustment piece. However, the button for the sight adjustment piece is missing (don't suppose that's going to be easy to replace).

The pistol is marked Germany on the left side of the barrel extension. S/N 209577 and with original rifling (still pretty decent) and I believe original grips as they are marked to the gun on the inside. I think I did okay just a pity about the minor rust (no pitting at least) and the missing button.

Not fired it yet and I need to take it down for a cleaning and oiling.

Actually it is. The FN carbine (I'll post the exact model in a minute or two - need coffee first) uses the same basic sight with different graduations & ramp angle and there are NOS complete sight assemblies for it on eBay & GB. :)

Actual C96 parts are, as you've already found out, extremely expensive. Alvin may have a Mauser C96 button. ;)

Here we go -

M24/30 FN MAUSER PART, CARBINE REAR SIGHT

M24/30 MAUSER SIGHT

M24/30 FN MAUSER CARBINE REAR SIGHT

M1922 CHILEAN CARBINE REAR SIGHT

Chilean M1895 Short Rifle Rear Sight Assy

M1895 Carbine Rear Sight Assembly

Graduated to 1400 Meters

I posted pics at -

"Alternate C96 Broomhandle Rear Sight"

http://forum.lugerforum.com/showthread.php?t=21154

In the past, I had nine instances of 1980 imported C96 from China. It's a big mistake that I sold them at low price years ago. Nowadays, even getting a couple of small parts back cost me the whole gun price that I sold. It's too late to kick myself. A few parts on Mauser are fragile -- extractor, firing pin, safety lever, and rear sight pushdown button.

You may want to check the function of the safety lever on this instance. In normal gun, hammer down position, pushing safety lever up, the hammer should move about 1mm away from the back of the firing pin. From picture, the hammer did not move on this one?

My first collector C96 was this one. After acquiring this nice gun, I wrongly thought there was no need to keep those mismatched guns with fair bore and did not realize their value. Even felt very happy that I could sell them at that time. This was a lesson learned in collecting.

Alvin, it does not move on this one (I have only one where it does move that 1mm away). At my stage though I've not yet reached the point where I would sell my 'poorer' quality pieces or mismatched ones since I'm somewhat a hoarder and snap up pieces at low prices (I have in the past two years picked up two Broomhandles for less than $700 and one for $450). I have three which are all-matching with this one being the nicest one (I don't plan on shooting it to be honest).

Rich, I've certainly found that out!

May shoot a few clips from it. That should be OK in most of cases. Mauser with nice bore shoots well. Here is the target paper of my FG C96 instance with newly acquired firing pin fired a few days ago. In door range was very dark. The "accuracy control" gun was a WASR-10 Romanian AK47 rifle. At same short distance (about 50 feet), FG C96 with stock attached performed similarly like that WASR-10. One round was off center, others falled into in the middle black circle. It's not a target gun, but good enough for any practical purpose :) The magic is the stock. Without stock? Bullets would fly everywhere. I still could not get used to it.

Alvin, very nice shooting and I hope to get an authentic German stock one day though may settle for a Chinese repro just for display (I'm hoping to one day put up a small cabinet to display my WWI pieces like medals, the holsters I have, and some various WWI military pocket watches (British Army marked).