Saturday, July 28, 2018
A vintage Glock, no less!
I'm not a collector of older firearms for the sake of their age or antiquity. My guns are shooters, plain and simple. Nevertheless, I was surprised this morning when I dropped into my local gun shop, to inquire about a firearm I've got on back-order with them.
The owner noticed I was wearing an older model Glock 17 on my hip, and asked to look at it. When I handed it over, he did a double-take, and pointed out that I had a first-generation Glock. It was manufactured sometime in the mid-1980's, and must have been one of the very first to be imported into this country. Until recently, when they ran out of combinations, Glock serial numbers were three letters followed by three numbers. This firearm's serial number begins with "A" - an indicator of its age.
I asked him whether that made it more valuable than run-of-the-mill used Glocks, and he said it did. Apparently first-generation Glocks in good condition (as mine is) are selling for anywhere between $700 and $900 to collectors, because there aren't many of them around. Most were sold to police departments, that shot them until they were almost falling apart, then traded them back to Glock for later-generation pistols. Glock duly scrapped most of the old ones, rather than resell them, because they wanted to sell more of their later-generation models (at a better price, of course).
It's nice to know I have a collector's item, but I won't keep it. There are a couple of other guns I want, so I reckon I'll sell this one, and use the money to buy others that I need. If any reader is interested, drop me a line (my e-mail address is in my blog profile); otherwise I'll list it somewhere like Gunbroker, and see about finding a buyer elsewhere.
Well, well, well. A collector's market for vintage "plastic fantastic" wonder nines. Who'd o' thunk it?
Peter
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12 comments:
Good on ya, Peter!
A gun that was manufactured 45+ years after I was born is "vintage"???
That makes me feel old... ;-)
I got one of those....somewhere ;-)
Congrats, Peter!
Swap it for a pair of Gen 3 Glock 17’s.
I like mine too... And NOT letting it go. I made that mistake with a Gen 1 19, and NOT doing that again...
Excellent. Now find yourself in possession of similar vintage Glock combat knives, washing machines, and excavation tools and you will have a 'collection' to be proud of.
Don't mind me, I purchased a Steyr M9 to be GLOCK avoidant.
I was fascinated by the link you provided, but I did kind of blink in disbelief for a minute when I read the line, early in the text:
"Only in the last hundred years or so has any government thought to restrict the right of it's citizenry to protect itself. "
because that's absolute nonsense. Governments and despots throughout history have *repeatedly* endeavored to strip their citizens of the tools of self defense. It's not a new phenomenon.
Indeed, the second amendment exists partly because the founding fathers had recently experienced such an effort at the hands of the British!
An even older example is the history of the Tonfa, http://www.tonfa.org/tonfa-history/ and there are countless more examples of tyrannical governments seeking to disarm their citize- (sorry, their *subjects* not citizens...but we Americans are citizens, not subjects, right? ...right? ...) scattered far and wide through the historical record.
Anyway, once I had recovered from my astonishment, I was glad I continued on, because the rest of the article very much makes up for that early misstep. Fascinating and educational at the same time! I didn't realize John Moses Browning actually participated in the design of the Browning Hi-Power, and (exposing my status as a naïf when it comes to firearms) I didn't know that 1911's had a toggle mechanism as opposed to a cam...and now I'm driven to learn why that was a problem...I predict a great deal of research lies ahead!
Oh, and congrats on your discovery! It's cool to learn that a polymer-style handgun can not only last that long, but last that long and remain in perfect working condition! :-)
There are people who will collect nearly ANYTHING. Power-line insulators. Barbed wire. The various collector's markets are one of the clearest indicators that , no, free markets are not and will not be rational (not that adding government buttinskism will help). OTOH, isn't it great that we live in a society wealthy enough to bother with this crap?
First gen Glocks for the ones here started at "AH", so I've been told. Mine's a "CZ" and I've gotten some of the same questions.
Can't believe the comment about PD wearing a Glock out - I'm more inclined to think management wanted something newer/better/badder/faster/shinier and got a trade in.
Glocks have been documented with round counts of more than 100k - most regular PD's would ever hit a tenth of that for regular duties.
The baby duck syndrome - you imprint on what was cool when you first noticed things. Guns, Muscle Cars, Music . . . A friend commented that the exception was early '80's muscle cars. They sucked, because GM and Ford were tuning in emissions controls. (Looking at you, turbo Trans-Am that made 170 horsepower, and you, Mustang II). So '60's and early '70's muscle cars sold at a premium for a decade.
sysadmn:
1971 was probably the last year for real performance in musclecars. That was when smog and insurance and government anti-performance hysteria hit the manufacturers hard. Horsepower dropped off dramatically in the following years, and the insurance costs got steep for anything that had public hp numbers.
In '77, I bought a '71 Mustang, and the insurance agent looked up the VIN in a little booklet, and happily announced a "20% surcharge". SAY WHAT? "Excessive horsepower" was his statement to explain it. Car was listed by Ford as rated at 370 hp. I was happy that Ford was sandbagging those numbers (to help it in classification in racing). Actual dyno numbers? 500 HP at the wheels, boxstock. Headers and a carb change easily upped that to 650+hp, IIRC. (BTW, mine had an automatic transmission, a very rare option.) It's only in the last few years that that level of power has once again become available from the factory.
We stopped going to the moon, and they took away performance cars. Now, the cars are back, and space is once again looking possible. 4 decades wasted, due to .gov malfeasance.
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