Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Slightly obscure and quirky, but excellent handguns...

one on Gun BroKer now for $2800

Closest I ever came to shooting a man, I had a Charter Arms 44 Spcl. (Bear in mind that i never have been, nor impersonated, a police officer). Off balance indivdual mistook me for someone else, and forced me over on the side of the road. Tries to sic a large doberman-mutt on me. One shot killed that dog on the spot (I hated it, but that is how it goes), and thankfully the cops showed before he got the next one. I never shook so hard in all my life!

I have a Star PD and I am going to part with it I do think, depends on if the Kimber I have up on GB sells. if it does not, then am going to list the PD here. Darn nice gun, that one.

One other very fine pair or of guns I have owned were Hi-Standards, one was a bottom of the line gun, with fixed sights, and a plastic grip, but the other was Victor new in the box with factory weights, and darn would that gun shoot!




ooh-ooh! My very favorite! I once had a very nice Beretta 948! It had very little finish remaining, and I had to smooth the safety where someone had been shooting it with stingers, making the safety stick, but it was light and super-duper accurate! it served for many years as my 'glove-box gun', until I got divorced and had to sell every darn thing i owned. have never found another - here is a pic I be-stoled of the net:

I recently sold a single Gyrojet round left over from my cartridge collecting days for $60.

Another quirky one is the Savage 101. Single shot .22 that looks like a single action revolver- right down to the fake noses of bullets visible inside the the cylinder "throats". The one I had was scary accurate, but it had a lousy trigger pull. Not one of Savage's better ideas.

Another similar design was the "real" Ruger Hawkeye....a single shot built on the Blackhawk revolver frame with a swing-out "cylinder". Always admired the design, but couldn't figure out just who they thought was going to buy them.

Colt (and a few others) made revolver/carbines as early as the blackpowder/cap&ball days. Great idea to increase the "firepower" of a rifle, but the flame and explosion so near one's face was "disconcerting" to say the least. Also having a forearm (and hand) in front of the cylinder where flame and shaved lead were directed hurt the popularity of these carbines.

Cartrdges made these carbines better, but you still had to deal with blackpowder flame and explosion near your face......but these were interesting firearms.

Russian Model 1895 Nagant.

http://www.sff.net/people/sanders/nagant.html

Very fond of the Charter Arms Bulldogs (old ones; Bridgeport and Stratford guns).

The Tokarev is another good one.

I owned two of these, they were sweet shooting 22's.



It's a Stoeger Luger and they came with a covered military style holster and an extra magazine.

I'd forgotten about a couple of unusual pistols I "owned" for a few hours.....but never fired.

The first was a Remington Rolling Block pistol I traded for ata gunshow in the 1970's. I sold it to another dealer a few hours later at the same show. It was a centerfire chambered for some type of .50 caliber cartridge but I'm not sure exactly what as I never saw any ammo. Interesting to say the least.

The second was a Liberator single-shot pistol from WWII era chambered in .45ACP although since the title of this thread says "excellent handguns" it might not count as it was anything but excellent. very crude, but served a purpose I suppose.

Great thread!

JohnW
Bought a P9S from a friend back i the early 80s. His wife had shot one box of shells through it (box of brass came with it), I kept it for several years and never even bought any ammo so decided it needed a new home.

Always wondered how/IF it eve shot/fired.

Most people I talk to, even gun cranks, have never heard of it.

i lost mine in late 1981...

there were several things about it that made it so good...

-ruggedness beyond reason, and superb accuracy...

-the grip frame and angle were just right for most hands...

-excellent easily visible sights that i never had to hunt for... always right there, and lined up where you're looking...

-the roller locked action made fast accurate shooting incredibly easy...

-thumb cocking lever allowed fast single action first shot without changing grip... and an excellent trigger in either single or double action...

-simplest field strip i know of...

James Dunn mentioned the CZ 45 in 25ACP...talk about an under-rated gun! I have only seen two...and I owned one of 'em. I got it for $50 becuse it had no grips and no mag. I had been digging thru my gun mentor's detritus of 50+ years of parts, and found the grips, and numrich had a mag. mine had a big scratch ont he side and yes, it was in the awful 25acp, but I really liked that little pistol - the dbl. action was oh-so-smooth.

more than a decade later, I saw one in a pawn shop. Went back to work and thought it over, and drove back one hour later...and it was gone!

hey, this made me think of one I DIDN'T like! I had a number of odd-ball pistols that I traded for, and usually sold pretty quick as others came my way (by product of being single, no kids, and working in a gunshop) and one of the guns I had was one of the H&R produced copies of the Webley in 32 ACP. the gun was handsome in an early-auto-pistol-sorta-way, but the trigger gaurd has this deep swell in it, to get your trigger finger in there. if you did not grip that gun thightly, that guard would RAP your middle-finger knuckle in the most painful way!

I also had at one time a Haneil Schmeisser 25acp pistol...nicely built but hard to find a real factory mag for...I got it cheap (100.00) and paid nearly that for a real factory mag. LOL

I had the same gun myself and wish I would have kept it. I went through a good 500 rounds without any malfunctions. More than I can say for the Kimber I bought years later.

I had a LAR Grizzly in the 45 Winchester magnum, great shooting gun but coming across ammo or brass got to be a pain. Killed more than a few pigs with it.

The P9S was a really interesting pistol, and one of the earliest guns to make greater use of polymers. I believe H&K dropped the roller locking concept on a handgun for the same reason that CZ abandoned it; they tend to break when you make the rollers that small.

I can remember shooting a P9S target model in .45 ACP that was just wicked accurate; I mean ready for a bullseye match right out of the box. My old boss (and James used to work for him too) was an H&K nut, and H&K dealer (including class 3�when H&K wasn�t stealing your leads) and he always had lots of H&K stuff and oddity�s (how �bout a FACTORY satin nickel H&K 93. Then he got 3 out of 4 SL7�s that were made with green wood; stuff like that).

Anyhow, we had several P9S� around, but the fully adjustable sight .45 I shot, using Winchester White Box would print under .5 inch at 25 yards all day long; just crazy accurate. Cocking to a single action first hit took a very strong thumb stroke; wouldn�t want to do that in a gunfight.

The P9S never found much of a home in military circles, but it was one of the pistols selected as fit for service in the German Police pistol trials back in the late �80�s, and I believe it was used in somewhat small numbers.

Ohhh yea I really remember all the oddball HK stuff that Branden had.....the P9s is a neat gun but I was never all that fond of it....but it was a very innovative and brought lots of new technologies to bear in handguns all in one package....

yes, H&K clearly thinks out of the box on a lot of things. I looked hard at HK91's years ago, but passed due to price. One writer commented that he'd used them for years, and the only one that ever jammed had a pebble caught in the action

I think H&K also had something called a VP30Z - or something like that? All polymer, hi-cap, and DA only?