The grip panels are another point of design difference. It also has an interesting “flattened” or “rounded and widened” trigger. I’m not that great with details some days either …įor one thing, it has the backstrap grip safety (which seems fairly sophisticated for such a small handgun, especially from “way back in the day”), and, most uniquely, it has a single grip screw on either side– in the middle lower-half of the grip. There are a number of unique features to this make, so it’s even more curious that there are no pictures to be found “out there.” Maybe this was one of the little things that slipped through the cracks when former-Vice President Al Gore was creating the internet? Hey, it could happen to anybody. This particular piece has a relatively low serial number (515 … not sure if that’s significant, but I like it), but there’s no suggestion in the guide that it’s worth much of anything … to anybody but me! It does, though, seem to be fairly uncommon (or is it just unwanted?). There is no picture of it in the 2010 Gun Values reference book either. To the best of my knowledge (and repeated online image searches), what is posted here may be the only pictures of this specific model on the web. What’s not to love about a curmudgeonly tough guy– lumps, bumps, scars, and all?
No, it’s a precision-made device, and it’s held up well to what appears to be a great deal of rough treatment. It’s smaller than the Jennings J-22, but it’s no Saturday Night Special.
The bottom line is that I’m glad it’s in my collection, and it will always have a good home as long as I have anything to say on the matter. So many possibilities, and the actual history of the gun before the mid-90s will, as far as I can tell, never be known. Was it “liberated” by an American volunteer fighting in, say, the Spanish Civil War or maybe a soldier in the European Theater of WWII? Or was it lost and forgotten because it was just a cheap military surplus piece bought on a whim for next to nothing at a local gun show and casually set aside? Had it been a cash-drawer security tool in a little Mom-and-Pop storefront shop back in the “Happy Days”? This Spanish-made pocket pistol came to me by way of a family member who says it was found in a back-room or basement of a commercial property in a Denver, Colorado, suburb when the purchase deal closed for the “building and all its contents.” How it got there, we don’t know.
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