Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Morphy Auction company
taking a look at a very interesting Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistol.
This is a Turkish Conehammer Mauser, and it is relevant because it is the very first substantive contract for Mauser C96 pistols
that was ever placed. Which in fact makes it the first substantive contract for semi-automatic pistols ever placed.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey was actually personally quite interested in firearms development and technology,
and the Mauser company sent him one of their pre-production guns in December of 1896,
one of the C96 pistols, figuring he was a guy into firearms,
he was the leader of a sovereign nation, and maybe he'd be interested in buying a bunch of them.
And as it turned out he was, so in December of 1897
they signed a contract between Turkey and the Mauser company for 1,000 of these pistols.
They have a number of distinctive elements on them that you don't see on other Mauser pistols,
and so let's take a look at those.
So this is the standard configuration of pistol that Mauser was offering, and it would turn out to be by far the most popular.
Has the long barrel, is chambered for the 7.63mm Mauser cartridge, has a 10 round magazine.
Mauser did also offer a short 6 round magazine and a much longer 20 round mag, but neither of those proved very popular.
The guns were all marked with the crest of Abdul Hamid II, below that is a date.
That is 1314, which in the Gregorian calendar translates to 1898. Which is when the pistols were actually manufactured and delivered.
The rear sight is marked in Farsi script numerals and so are the serial numbers.
This is gun number 371, which is what's marked right there.
You'll also find that marked on the hammer.
It's also marked on the inside of the grips, I'm not going to pull those off to show you.
And then there's also a serial number on the follower.
Not super uncommon for Mauser C96s the follower is actually mismatched, and that is 377 instead of 371.
Unfortunately, this also has an IRS number scribed in the side. That is because at some point years, if not decades, ago
(in fact probably decades considering it's an IRS number)
this pistol was registered as a short barrelled rifle, because that was the only legal way
to be able to possess it with a shoulder stock.
Fortunately that ruling has changed, and original C96s with original stocks are now considered exempt from the NFA.
But this one was registered, which meant you had to put its registration number on the gun somewhere,
and they chose to stick it right there on the side.
Now speaking of that, every one of these pistols did come with a wooden holster stock combination.
I have left this one off because this gun here at Morphys does have a shoulder stock, but it is a mismatched stock.
... And in fact it's not a Turkish contract stock, so I just left that off.
It's identical in design to all of the standard C96 stocks.
What I want to instead mention is this "Conehammer" nomenclature, which you may have caught in the title.
It is called that because if you look at the hammer from the sides, there's sort of this stepped cone on either side.
It's not really clear why they went with that. It's, you know, it is one form of gripping surface.
They moved on from this fairly quickly, so these were only manufactured until about 1899.
After that you had what was called a large ring hammer, which had a big hole in the centre.
And after that was the small ring hammer, which has a smaller hole in the centre.
But both large ring and small ring are flat, so you don't have these extensions as you do on the Conehammer.
The full order of 1,000 of these guns were delivered about 6 months after they were ordered in May of 1898.
They shipped off for Turkey. When they arrived, actually a lot of them ended up in storage.
So under Abdul Hamid II's rule there's quite a lot of concern about a potential military coup.
And so while the palace guards of course had arms, a lot of ... the standard military arms were typically kept locked up in armouries,
where they weren't just available to anyone. And that included a lot of these C96 pistols.
So there was a revolution in 1908 - 1909, and after that the armouries were kind of opened up
and guns were much more liberally distributed amongst the army and the police force.
And that included, again, a lot of these C96s.
So they saw service as police guns, they saw service as officer's pistols in the military.
And at least a handful of them saw service in World War One in that role.
After the war these were kind of declared obsolete, like they're kind of the old stuff,
there aren't that many, they're standardising on new equipment.
And so the ... Turkish C96 pistols were offered up as basically pretty cheap surplus
to any police or army officers who are interested in purchasing them. And so a lot of them sort of spread out through Turkey
owned by officers like that, and they saw quite a bit of use. And for that reason...
Well, for a couple of reasons they're not very common today.
There weren't that many to begin with, they are now over 120 years old, and they got used a lot.
You know, this was the cheap available surplus pistol. The people who were buying these didn't generally
buy them because they thought they were going to be super-valuable collectibles someday.
But it turns out they are because of their place as
the very first sale of the very first truly commercially successful self-loading military pistol.
So very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
A lot of them are in rougher condition than this, there're not that many that are in quite nice condition.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you enjoy this sort of thing, make sure to check out Morphy's auction catalogues.
They always have a wide variety of interesting firearms to take a look at.
Thanks for watching.