Captured War Trophies

[Imperial Arms]

Originally posted by tacfoley
The DWM pistol is a Model 23 in 7.65mm/32ACP. It is a good qualtiy version/near copy of the Browning [FN] Modelle 1910, and appears to be in overall good condition.

Immediately after WW1 DWM were prohibited from producing any more Parabellum pistols of the P.08 type by the Versailles Treaty - probably why there are no P.08 with the 1919 date. DWM looked around for a suitably un-military handgun to make, and settled on this one. They changed the grips, altered the operation of the magazine catch, and put it into production as the Model 22 - it went on sale in 1921.

The orginal model had wooden grip plates, but the later version that came along in 1922 had black plastic-like grips, and the pistol became the Model 23. There is only one marking on the pistol - the DWM logo on the left-hand side of the slide. It was in production until the end of 1928, and around 50,000 were made and sold. By then Fabrique Nationale in Belgium had threatened DWM with legal action for infringement of patents and copyright, in spite of the fact that the 1910 patent was due to exprie

This is a fine pistol, and could reasonably have been carried by a staff officer of any arm of service.

tac

Tacfoley is mainly correct with his explanation regarding the DWM M1922/23 pistol. I would like to add that in the early 1900's, Ludwig Loewe, owner of the DWM factory, acquired about a 20% stake in the FN factory and these ownership rights were used by the DWM factory after WWI to produce a pistol outside of Germany in order to bypass the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. This is a reason why the pistol has no other markings except for the DWM logo.

As a result of limited knowledge that existed about this pistol, which probably caused a lack of interest from many collectors, it was often overlooked, however, it seems that the this pistol is starting to get the attention of some collectors who have an interest with the DWM factory. Maybe it is just the DWM logo on a different pistol that will cause this pistol to bounce up in price!

In my opinion, the value of this pistol is about $1,000. Some collectors will prefer the early model with the wooden grips and other collectors will prefer the later model with the black grips having the large DWM marking. We will have to see what happens in the future regarding its value, but I like this model pistol and its links to the DWM factory. It was probably cheaper and simpler to make than compared to a Luger pistol and I wonder why DWM did not explore this opportunity earlier?

Albert