please tell me if this P08 is correct

[John Sabato]

The grips appear to me to be reproductions made of a soft plastic, and the checkering does not appear in these photographs to be of the original patterna for a "black widow". The border around the checkering seems wider than what it would be on genuine original grips.

The original grips would be made of bakelite, and not plastic. If you heat the tip of a needle to red hot and carefully touch the inside of the grip in an area where it would be less likely to be noticeable, the grip material will smoke, melt, and "blob" if it is plastic.

Bakelite grips will not react this way.

[andy_ita]

hi John
well fortunatly, my job consist in trade and work plastics.....lol
so i can identify almost all the plastics burnig and sniff it...

but i made the test anyway, right now.
with a very sharp knife i cut ( hardly) a very little part from internal, and burnt it. the plastic became red, but it doent burn, and the smell is a tipical bakelite smell..
so i can confirm at 100% thath the material is bakelite ;-)

[John Sabato]

Originally Posted by andy_ita

hi John
well fortunatly, my job consist in trade and work plastics.....lol
so i can identify almost all the plastics burnig and sniff it...

but i made the test anyway, right now.
with a very sharp knife i cut ( hardly) a very little part from internal, and burnt it. the plastic became red, but it doent burn, and the smell is a tipical bakelite smell..
so i can confirm at 100% thath the material is bakelite ;-)

If you can confirm that the material is in fact bakelite, then the grips are probably genuine original grips. I have not seen reproduction BW grips in bakelite... only in plastic. Congrats. The grips alone are worth a few hundred dollars in the U.S. collector market (dependent on condition).