Category Archive 'Colt Model 1911'
09 Dec 2015

What Will The CMP 1911s Sell For?

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1911A1

Steve Johnson takes a knowledgeable guess:

I would expect CMP 1911 pistols to be about 30-50% less than the current market price. The market price for WWII M1911 pistols is about $1000 – $4000+. $2000 seems to be the going price for Service Grade pistols.

Based on the market prices, the CMP’s pricing history and the the increase of supply that these pistols will bring to the market, my guesstimate pricing for CMP 1911 pistols are:

    Grade Price
    CMP Rack Grade 1911 Price – *
    CMP Field Grade 1911 Price $750
    CMP Service Grade 1911 Price $850
    CMP Special Grade 1911 Price $1100
    Other ** $1800 +

    * I do not expect there to be rack grade pistols for sale initially.
    ** Depending on what is in the Army inventory, there could be a range of rare pistols in their own categories, but not rare enough to go to auction.

I hope the prices will be lower than my estimates. I know many of you are hoping for $500 1911 pistols but I do not realistically expect this to happen. Modern 1911 pistols are popular enough in their own right without the added attraction of being military surplus.

01 Dec 2015

Great News! The 1911s Are Coming!

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1911

No one thought it would happen, but Barack Obama actually did a few days ago sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which included an amendment introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL3) authorizing the Civilian Marksmanship Program to sell to Americans some 100,000 Model 1911 Colt pistols which have been sitting in warehouses since the US Military replaced the beloved .45 1911 with the 9mm Beretta M9 in 1985.

Gun collectors have pushed prices for existing 1911s up to serious levels. Meanwhile, the gospel of the late Jeff Cooper has made the old 1911 into a tremendously popular choice for both target matches and personal defense. These days, everybody, Ruger, Remington, even Smith & Wesson is manufacturing his own knock-off of John Browning’s century-old masterpiece.

Nonetheless, guns which saw military service possess a special cachet and will always be particularly appealing to collectors. Frankly, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these myself.

Mike Weiser, astonishingly appearing at what El Rushbo likes to call the Puffington Host, finds the glass half empty.

There’s only one little problem. Right now if I want to sell one of my 1911 service pistols with the original markings on the slide and frame, the gun will fetch me somewhere just south of two thousand bucks. Know what’s going to happen to that price when thousands of surplus army pistols hit the street? The value of my 1911 stash just disappeared. Thanks for nothing, NRA. Thanks for nothing President Obama. And Merry Christmas to both of you too.

I think his fears may be exaggerated. In the old days, the CMP’s mission was encouraging civilian marksmanship by getting surplus military weapons into the hands of shooters. Before WWII, the CMP sold through the NRA and my uncles used to get Springfields and Enfields for $25 and Krag carbines for $5. These days, the CMP only sells to individuals who jump through lots of hoops, including proving that you participate in matches at a CMP-recognized shooting club, and they sell carefully-graded Garands at pretty steep prices. My guess is that the CMP is going to let go of those 1911s in a slow trickle at very retail-ish prices. They will probably also sell a lot of them at auction. And the supply will be kept low and slow, precisely in order to keep prices up.

19 Apr 2015

John Moses Browning Thought of Everything

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25 Mar 2015

Deadliest Gunfighting Pistols of All Time?

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LugerP08
Pistole Parabellum 1908

Jim Dickson, at Gun Digest, picks the three deadliest gunfighting pistols of all time.

His choices are the German Luger, the Colt Model 1911, and the Colt Model 1873 Peacemaker.

Personally, I think his list ought to have been longer. But the surprising choice is, of course, the Luger. Americans who played with one will be even more surprised to find the author praising the Luger for its reliability of functioning.

When the troops needed pistols the Fatherland set out to supply them, despite the fact that the Luger pistol cost three times as much to manufacture as the Mauser rifle.

The Luger proved up to the challenge. It took in stride the mud, dust and sand maelstrom that was a WWI artillery barrage and kept on working when the famed Smith & Wesson Triple-Lock Revolvers were jamming. It would continue firing when its barrel was bulged from being clogged with mud. A Browning-style gun with the slide over the barrel is jammed solid until a new barrel can be installed when its barrel is bulged.

This feature saved so many German lives in the First World War that when the P38 was designed, the army specifications demanded a fully exposed barrel on it. All the Luger needs for reliability is a magazine spring that is as strong as you can get in the magazine and proper ammo—standard velocity ammo of the proper overall length. Hot loads cycle the action too fast for the magazine to feed cartridges in position to chamber before the bolt rides them down. This was never a problem with German army issue ammo.

A larger problem was the fact that the average German soldier was not a pistol shooter. The Luger handled that problem better than any pistol before or since. The Luger is the best pointing pistol ever made, bar none. Just point at the target and you hit it. It is as simple as that. It is also the most accurate pistol you will ever find. Most any good Luger will shoot a 10mm group with 9mm ammo at 25 yards.

Armed with the Luger the German troops proved a terror in trench fighting. Every stormtrooper was issued one regardless of rank, and production was geared up to equip every combat soldier by late 1918 or 1919. The Luger was a key factor in the new stormtrooper tactics as well as the new infiltration strategies of General Von Hutier and Colonel Bruchmuller, which had knocked Russia out of the war. The intensity of the trench fighting and the number of kills made by the Luger was staggering.

World War II saw more intense fighting with the Luger often being used against Russian human-wave assaults. Sometimes it was the officer’s only weapon and sometimes it was the last thing he had loaded magazines for. At those close ranges one could hardly miss. Once more the tally went up drastically. Add to these figures the numbers of the other countries’ armies that used the Luger and you get a number far exceeding any other pistol.

Read the whole thing.

09 Jul 2014

Firearm Experts Told the Army So

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ColtArmyRevolver
The Colt M1892 Revolver chambered in .38 Long Colt was found inadequate to stop a hopped-up, charging Muslim terrorist during the Phillipine Insurrection.

Russ Chastain observes that we seem to have a US Army that can’t learn from history, and is therefore obliged to repeat it.

Dear U.S. Army: We told you so.

When 38 bullets (actually .357 caliber, which is pretty much 9mm) failed to stop its enemies, the U.S. Army went in search of a bigger, better cartridge. The result was John Browning’s M1911 semi-automatic pistol and the 45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) cartridge for which it was designed.

As you can guess from the M1911 designation, the 45 ACP was adopted into military service 103 years ago.

In 1985, the U.S. Army took a huge step backwards when it summarily dumped the 45 ACP in favor of the underpowered 9mm Luger cartridge (a.k.a. 9mm Parabellum). Irony: The 9mm is not quite as powerful as the cartridge which the 45 ACP replaced about 75 years earlier.

Now, things have apparently come full circle. Citing combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, authorities are once again recognizing the advantage of using a more powerful cartridge.

True to form, the government won’t look back at what once worked well and embrace it. Instead they plan to spend billions of our dollars creating and adopting something they’re calling a Modular Handgun System (MHS). And they’re not just tossing out the 9mm ammo and firearms. They’re ditching whole heaps of gear, holsters included, and starting over.

They haven’t yet settled on a caliber, and are looking just about anything better than a nine. This would include a faster same-caliber round (357 Sig) as well as larger-caliber cartridges like the 40 S&W, 10mm Auto, and 45 ACP.

Devotees of the diminutive 9mm Luger cartridge are going to have a hard time swallowing the fact that their Precious has been found to be a bit, er, weak. …

Anybody think they’ll end up with some jazzed-up version of a 1911? Hmmmm…

Read the whole thing.

1911kit
John Browning’s Model 1911 design, chambered in .45 ACP, was consequently adopted to replace the too anemic .38 revolver.

05 Jul 2014

Army Wants a More Potent Sidearm

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1911A1-10
The sidearm they need has already been invented.

Military Times:

The U.S. Army is moving forward to replace the Cold War-era M9 9mm pistol with a more powerful handgun that also meets the needs of the other services.

As the lead agent for small arms, the Army will hold an industry day July 29 to talk to gun makers about the joint, Modular Handgun System or MHS.

The MHS would replace the Army’s inventory of more than 200,000 outdated M9 pistols and several thousand M11 9mm pistols with one that has greater accuracy, lethality, reliability and durability, according to Daryl Easlick, a project officer with the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga.

“It’s a total system replacement — new gun, new ammo, new holster, everything,” Easlick said.

The Army began working with the small arms industry on MHS in early 2013, but the effort has been in the works for more than five years. If successful, it would result in the Defense Department buying more than 400,000 new pistols during a period of significant defense-spending reductions. …

One of the major goals of the MHS effort is to adopt a pistol chambered for a more potent round than the current 9mm, weapons officials said. The U.S. military replaced the .45 caliber 1911 pistol with the M9 in 1985 and began using the 9mm NATO round at that time.

Soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have complained that the 9mm round is not powerful enough to be effective in combat.

“The 9mm doesn’t score high with soldier feedback,” said Easlick, explaining that the Army, and the other services, want a round that will have better terminal effects — or cause more damage — when it hits enemy combatants. “We have to do better than our current 9mm.”

It shouldn’t take a long time to figure out that pretty much the ideal design already exists and dates back 103 years.

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