Absolut
Senior Member
Just fairly recently I've had the opportunity to go to a lifetime collection of a gun dealer and buy stuff, for him, due to age, selling off. He had always set aside the best pieces for him. His passion always were German WWI and WWII items. Among the items were also like a dozen of guns from the Mauser factory collection, of which I btw bought a few items, but that is another topic for them being rifles. Despite preferring rifles over handguns there was one item I could not pass upon - a Kriegsmarine marked Radom VIS, which atop of that came with two magazines of which both match the number on the front of the frame. For the fact that it had been on his personal gun license I was even able to verify his claim that it was purchased 40 years ago at a gunshow in Norway and kept since then.
Despite that, I just wanted to make sure and did research in place (both with literature as well as online), because a KM Radom VIS with two matching numbers magazines so far was unheard of. Especially since the second magazine had a kind of X added to the number of the second mag. This was a bit unusual at first, but a research - especially on this forum - unveiled that there are quite a few magazines that feature this very flat X following the number on the magazine.
This then started to make sense, having a pistol in hands with two matching numbers magazines, due to the fact that one was only marked N42, whereas the other magazine was marked N42X. The X was, similar to the + on Luger magazines, the indication for the spare magazine.
With this particular pistol it was especially interesting for the fact that if one looks close originally the second magazine would had been marked N421, but the 1 was over-pantographed to turn it to an X. Seems that this was kind of a factory error.
Attached are pictures. I did my best and also borrowed my brothers macro objective to make really great pictures. If there is something more that I had missed and someone wants to see, please let me know. For those looking at the pictures too, take note the pistol has the typical plum-colored slide that you can see with these KM a lot. Also note that the front of the frame is pretty worn, what interestingly seems to be quite common for KM VIS Radom, at least the research showed that this was nothing uncommon. Maybe the surface preparation for the pantographing gave this result, maybe that was due to them often holding to the frame and nowhere else, I don't know.
Despite that, I just wanted to make sure and did research in place (both with literature as well as online), because a KM Radom VIS with two matching numbers magazines so far was unheard of. Especially since the second magazine had a kind of X added to the number of the second mag. This was a bit unusual at first, but a research - especially on this forum - unveiled that there are quite a few magazines that feature this very flat X following the number on the magazine.
This then started to make sense, having a pistol in hands with two matching numbers magazines, due to the fact that one was only marked N42, whereas the other magazine was marked N42X. The X was, similar to the + on Luger magazines, the indication for the spare magazine.
With this particular pistol it was especially interesting for the fact that if one looks close originally the second magazine would had been marked N421, but the 1 was over-pantographed to turn it to an X. Seems that this was kind of a factory error.
Attached are pictures. I did my best and also borrowed my brothers macro objective to make really great pictures. If there is something more that I had missed and someone wants to see, please let me know. For those looking at the pictures too, take note the pistol has the typical plum-colored slide that you can see with these KM a lot. Also note that the front of the frame is pretty worn, what interestingly seems to be quite common for KM VIS Radom, at least the research showed that this was nothing uncommon. Maybe the surface preparation for the pantographing gave this result, maybe that was due to them often holding to the frame and nowhere else, I don't know.
