I am debating whether or not I want one.
I love the history, and that is why I'd get one. I can afford it, and I can fix one up without detracting from it's historical value. Maybe. If frame and slide fitment is crap (it will be), if the barrel lockup is loose (it will be) there still might be a way to fix the sear hammer engagement without ditching the hammer and only getting a new sear.
But that's not the point.
I hesitate because I don't have a big case of the WANTS, and another safe queen 1911 is less practical for me where I am right now. It's cool, I guess, just not practical.
I am more likely to buy a $4000 custom 1911 than a $999 piece of history.
What a weird place to be at this point of my Shottist career, just 10 years in.
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3 comments:
I agree.
Since the last 1911A1 was bought by the G in 1945, you'll be getting a gun that's been rode hard for 40-some years, then put up wet for another 30. Getting a gun that's been in service for 40+ years is quite different from inheriting Gramps's old .45 that he brought home from Bastogne or Okinawa. The stories you hear from postwar vets about being issued rattletrap .45s that couldn't hit a washtub at 10 yards are exaggerations, but they have some basis in fact. And even if CMP reconditions them, you're still basically buying a pig in a poke.
Having said all that, I can't wait to see what they look like when they finally go up for sale. I hope I'm wrong.
It's going to be a collector's market, and the CMP's going to be charging collector prices. Pass.
Had a friend in the AF Reserve back in the 90's, and they had to qualify on those old .45's, even though they were issued M9's or M11's for aircraft crew security purposes. He said that after failing to qualify, he ended up taking a bunch of them apart to swap frames, slides, and barrels to get a tighter gun.
I think they let him use his own Colt Officers Model the next time, but I'm not positive about that. IIRC, he then got permission to carry that in place of the normal issue handgun on flights that required it, due to being able to conceal it in his shoulder rig under a flight suit. Supposedly, higher level brass had the discretion to allow some modification to the rules that covered this sort of thing.
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