This 1899 Parabellum sold for a huge amount of money today...

[Imperial Arms]

Originally Posted by alvin

Could Swiss return 20 trial guns back to German to get some discount for the new ordering? I heard some used TE 1900 were returned to German this way.... not big money for a country, but government loved the game of spending thousands to "save" taxpayer hundreds, and weird enough, that's counted as credit.

Just speculation.

Hello Alvin,

You bring up an interesting 'business' topic about what had occurred later with some M1900 TE pistols (to obtain 50 samples of the M1902 Cartridge Counter) or a means to get a discount for a larger order. Could have something similar happened earlier with the twenty purchased M1899 Swiss pistols where they were returned to the DWM factory and NEW improved M1900 pistols (such as my M1900 'GL' serial #13) to be given as some form of 'sweetner' to the Swiss Commission? It could be possible, but plenty of speculation and unknowns still remain. It was not necessary for DWM to give pistols as gifts to a government commission (to the best of my knowledge, no 'GL' pistols were given to the Dutch, British or US commission officers during their trials), but being the first contract for the DWM factory, maybe some kind of exchange could have been considered for new pistols for each commission member - who knows?

I still maintain my position that the purchased M1899 pistols were NOT modified nor renumbered at the DWM factory and the same refurbished pistols not given as gifts to the Swiss Commission and others delivered to the British Trials. I would still need to research and ponder whether some kind of exchange could have been possible and the reasons for it.

You presented an interesting thought.

Albert