Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com
I'm Ian McCollum and today I am here at the Rock Island Auction Company taking a look at a Star Model 30.
And this is not normally a very exciting firearm for most people
However, what's kind of cool about this one is that it was actually...
This particular one was one of a batch that was purchased by the Colt company to do some "internal review",
Which is, I think, diplomatic shorthand to "to see if we can copy this and make it ourselves or, perhaps, make it under licence"
But Colt was very much interested in thinking that, you know, maybe,
"We're having a hard time coming up with any sort of good ideas ourselves internally
And maybe we can take something from Star and just make that instead?"
So, development of this actually starts with the Star Model 28, which was first introduced in the late 1970s
(Like, 1978?)
And it was actually one of the competitors in the first round of US Army XM9 trials.
When the US army was looking to adopt a high-capacity 9-millimeter service pistol to replace the 1911.
They... The initial round of trials, kind of, had a little bit from everybody, and Star submitted their Model 28 to that testing.
Unfortunately for Star, it didn't work out - didn't end up being one of the winners.
But there was a subsequent testing a few years later and, first off, by that time Star had gone back to the Model 28,
They'd taken some of the critique that they had gotten, acted on it, redesigned the guns slightly and released it as the Model 30 in 1981.
And by the mid-1980s... You see, a Beretta 92 was chosen as a winner of XM9 trials,
But there was a lot of political unrest about it, because it wasn't an American-made gun.
There was a lot of resistance to the idea of contracting with Italy to make the American Army sidearm, so there were possibilities floating around.
And in 1986 Colt bought 20 Star Model 30s:
They bought ten 30M's and they bought ten 30PK's.
This is one of the PKs. They bought them for this "internal review" and...
Well, let me show you this gun up close and then we'll come back and talk about what Colt ended up doing with these.
So this was the era of the "Wonder Nine":
Polymer frames weren't really in vogue yet, but the idea of the double-stack high-capacity double-action 9-millimeter service pistol was kind of the hot new thing.
And Star was pretty excited to get into that.
So, they made some revisions fairly quickly to the the Model 28:
The main visual one that you can see is they made the slide serrations larger:
Extended the distance that they were cutting serrations, made them deeper, made the the slide easier to grasp.
They did a few revisions to the extractor and the safety lever as well, but that's a little less obvious from the outside.
These guns have a design that's based (or inspired, at least) on the CZ-75 and the SIG 210.
They have a better style of unitized, like, a modular fire control assembly - so, the whole back strap comes out.
You'll notice that the slide rails are on the inside here...
In fact, we can go ahead and just take this apart completely and very briefly here.
It DOES have a magazine safety, and I want to point out that this is a gun that's coming up for auction...
The magazine is missing from the one at auction,
So I have grabbed this other magazine, just so that I can actually drop the hammer, because it DOES have that magazine safety.
So, to disassemble this, we just line up *those* two notches, push out a slide stop in... Right there.
And then the slide comes off the front of the frame.
We have a captive recoil spring, we have a linkless barrel... And there you go.
There's not a whole lot to it. It's pretty typical of what we'd expect today from the "Wonder Nine" era.
So a little bit of designation information for you:
This is a 30PK.
You will generally run into a couple different designations:
There are Model M guns - which is Military, which means full size or full length.
There are also Ps (like this one) and that is Police, which is the short version.
So, the 30M has a longer barrel and slide than this guy.
The K is either there or not there.
K indicates an alloy - an aluminum alloy frame, which is a little bit lighter weight.
If the gun has a steel frame, there is no special designation.
So, basically, you'll run into that - the common variations are the 30M, the 30P and the 30PK.
The Star pistols never really got a whole lot of love here, in the United States.
They're not bad guns. They're, actually, quite robust guns. They're dependable guns.
They don't look very sexy, though. The lines are a little bit blocky. And...
People had a lot of options in these pistols and the idea of buying one from Spain didn't...
Well, wasn't really top of a whole lot of people's list at that point.
Star did actually sponsor an IPSec team in the 80s, and did reasonably well with them, which, I think,
Is something a lot of people wouldn't expect to hear about these days, but
It just never... They were never quite able to translate it into a really successful pistol.
Now, as for this one in particular: we have the standard Star markings:
Benicio Echeverria; Eibar, Spain; caliber: 9 mm P - that is for Parabellum.
Remember, that Spain at this point was still had some lingering holdover use of the 9 millimeter Largo cartridge
And the the "Wonder Nine" Stars - the 28 the 30 and the 31 - were never designed for Largo. They're only 9 mm Parabellum.
Then we have this Colt marking and that was actually done by Colt when they got these guns in - 10 PKs and 10 Model Ms -
They went ahead and stuck their name and address on all 20 of them.
The other side (like you already saw it) just has the model designation and the serial number.
And then we have the adjustable sights. We have the slide mounted safety...
Does not have a decocker (that was something they added in the Model 31, which would come a few years later).
After taking the time to look at these guns in-house and assess them and do some engineering work (presumably),
Colt came to the conclusion that - no, they weren't actually interested in further developing this gun or manufactoring this gun themselves.
So, at that point, they've got 20 of these things lying around the shop - and they simply offered them for sale to Colt employees.
Man, they were all sold.
So, there are 20 of these are floating around on the market now
And it's pretty cool to get a chance to take a look at *this* one.
It is a totally standard Star 30PK, but it's got that Colt roll mark and has this neat history of having gone through the Colt factory as well.
So, if you'd like to own this one yourself, take a look at the description text below the video -
You'll find a link there to ForgottenWeapons, from where you can click over to the Rock Island Auction Company catalog page for this guy.
You can take a look at Rock Island's pictures, their description, their price estimate,..
There is actually a factory letter from Colt that goes with this pistol confirming that back story to it.
So, if you're interested in, you can place a bid on it right through Rock Island website.
Thanks for watching