The Borchardt #27 only came out of the Browning family collection a couple of years ago. I corresponded with Eric Browning shortly before it came on the market. It has a fascinating history. The initial asking price was around $70K, which soon dropped to $50K when offered by Cherry's. After about a year of no sale it dropped to $30K and I suspect it was a Browning/Cherry's colaboration that put it up for auction, where it finally brought the asking price.
The background story on how the gun ended up in the Browning collection is one for the books. According to the account I was given, evidently Hugo Borchardt and John Browning were in the same meeting at FN in Belgium, both attempting to secure contracts for production of their respective guns. Borchardt had brought #27 along, still in the white. The bottom line is that FN opted to go with Browning, whereupon Borchardt stormed out of the meeting leaving his sample behind. Some time later FN offered the gun to Browning (a souvenier?
) and it remained in the collection until now.
The Browning collection #27, although still in the white, is a standard early production gun and not a prototype. It is interesting to note that some of the parts of the toggle train are blued. A forum member from South America, Emiliano Caramaschi, contacted me not too long after I was inquiring aout the Browning gun. He sent photos of a rather rough but unusual Borchardt. It was also numbered 27! After some correspondence between Emiliano, Dr. Geoff Sturgess and myself it was determined that the gun was a true pre-production example. This was a bit of a landmark discovery as the duplicate serial number helped establish that the prototype, pre-production, and production Borchards had their own individual serial numbering sequence and were not consecutive. Photos of Emiliano's Borchardt will be featured in Dr. Sturgess' publication of the revised and vastly improved opus magnum of Gortz/Sturgess,