finally Found! The Rare Revolving Luger!!!!

[Rev03FFL]

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