Black Widow Grips
 

Black Widow Grips

I'm curious what the final selling price will be. I've bought a lot of items from Reidar, and you can rest assured it's pre-1945.

Heydrich,

I have looked at quite a few known-authentic "black widow" grips, and these appear to be identical. I will be surprised if they don't sell for $150 or more. The small dent on the right grip detracts from the overall appearance, but otherwise they look good to me.

Luke

I agree wil Luke, they look orignial. It's amazing how much these are going for these days. My guess is they'll go for $175.

Tracy

Just what constitutes a "Black Widow" pistol?

My impression is that it is a German Military Issue Mauser with the small parts blacked (as the Brits say) rather than strawed and black plastic grips. (All original of course) Or in other words a late production war time Mauser. As such it isn't anything so special as the tone of the designation implies.

The only diffence is the black bakelite grips, these should only be seen on mid 1941 and all 1942 Mauser Lugers.

unspellable,

This subject has been discussed on the Forum numerous times. I believe that the consensus is that some of the 1941 byf (u block and higher) and 1942 byf Lugers were issued with these black grips. And, as Tracy says, they are of no particular significance.

A well known dealer coined the term, "Black Widow Luger," as a marketing term and it stuck.

Luke

Actually, the black plastic grips appeared in June of 1941 and became standard issue in concert with the wood grips on 41-byf Lugers. What happened in the - u - block of the 41-byf production had to do with the numbering of Luger magazines. The records indicate that Mauser seriously curtailed the numbering of Luger magazines at this point. I suspect it was because the black plastic magazine bottoms were to difficult to number (They numbered a few) consequently, about 97% of the magazine numbering ceased. For what it's worth, I have recorded gobs of - u - block magazine numbers, None in the - v - block, two in the - w - block, four in the - x - block and two in the - y - block. The common magazine during this period was the C.G. Haenel magazine marked "fxo-SE37-P08" the P 08 was rightside up vs the earlier fxo magazines with the upside down P 08 mark. Just another opinion.

I was pretty close, they went for $177.51