MASSIVE COLLECTION OF WW2 PISTOLS

 

I know you guys missed me

Hey guys! And welcome to another show and tell video. Now I've been away for a few days. I know you guys missed me. You think I'm just playing around, but in fact, I've been busy picking up a collection in New Orleans, Louisiana, about 700 guns, believe it or not. And you've already seen the thumbnail, that's just a teaser. I'm going to show you some of those guns and then we'll probably do a series of videos, picking out some of the special guns in this collection. 

 

The Don Andrews Collection

The Don Andrews Collection

Now this was the collection of Don Andrews. I knew Don, not nearly as well as I knew Peter. Peter, as you remember, collected mostly Walthers. Don however, collected a little bit of everything. Although, if you look at this collection, it's almost all German pistols. You do see a couple of modern rifles, actually, he was a hunter. So those are modern rifles stacked against the radiator here and a couple of flintlocks. But that's it. That's all the rifles in the entire collection, but German pistols were his forte.

 

Who was Don Andrews?

Now I'm told that he really got his passion for German pistols because he was in the US Army and in Germany, right after the war. He was in the US Army, a First Lieutenant and later the Army Corps of Engineers. And while he was in Germany post-war, he helped with reconstruction, especially in manufacturing, where they were converting factories from wartime production to civilian use. And so he really got a passion being in a lot of these factories, he picked up a lot of late war guns, which you're going to see in just a few minutes. 

 

Don had Guns all over the City

Now, I mentioned already that I had a few contacts with Don, we did a few business deals. I was aware that he was a huge collector, but Don really came to the forefront of my attention when Katrina hit. I heard about this guy in New Orleans who had a huge collection and he had guns in safes all over the city. I think there were about six bank vaults, where he stored guns.

 

Katrina broke the Dam and Destroyed the Collection

 And if you know, Katrina, the hurricane came through and people thought, okay, we're fine. But then the lake, the dam broke, I think it was Lake Charles and flooded the entire city. And a lot of these banks which don't have basements, by the way, because of the low lying land, a lot of these banks were filled waist-deep with water. And so in the safes, anything that was up to about three feet, was completely ruined. And many of his really rare guns, I'm told a lot of Lugers, Navy Lugers, basically, a lot of expensive guns were completely ruined, because they sat in brackish water for at least a month because the National Guard wouldn't let you come back into the city, they closed it all off. So a lot of guns were completely ruined, and they went off for parts or restoration. He basically sold the ones that were ruined. 

 

Brackish Water plus the humidity! What a Disaster!

The other guns that were not ruined actually sat then in that humid air, because the air conditioning, the electricity was out. So it sat in humid air for at least a month or more. And all I can say is I can just imagine how beautiful this collection was at one time. But nonetheless, these guns still have value. And I'm bringing them to all of you, which might be a good thing in that, remember that video I did was seven German pistols that you can still buy for under $1,000. Well, right after I did that video COVID hit and prices went up. 

 

Are you guys still looking for guns under $1000?

So people write to me after watching that video and say, where are these guns under $1,000. Because now all of them that I mentioned are pretty much over $1,000. That's good if you're a collector because the values went up. But if you're trying to buy, it's tough to find guns that are under $1,000. This collection will have a lot of guns under $1,000. So you want to stay tuned to our channel and keep checking out our website because we're going to start listing them starting tomorrow. 

 

RIP Don

RIP Don

Just to wrap up Don's life. He actually died in November of 2019. And it's just taken this long to settle up some of the estate issues but I was able to visit there this past week. He died at the age of 90. He had worked in the oil and gas industry. He was a geologist and worked in Louisiana in the oil and gas industry, and made a lot of friends there. He is well known in that community. 

 

Check out my Canes

Now Don also collected other things just like actually at Peter's house. I was amazed at all the things he collected, but Don had hummels in his house and he had right in the doorway there was a stack of canes. There must have been 300 canes. I brought home a couple of them, this one tickled me a little bit. There are a couple canes, one had a 1911 Colt and there was another one with a pistol. No these do not shoot but they're just kind of cool-looking canes. I'm not ready for the cane yet, but probably someday soon. 

 

I want to go back!

I want to go back!

Now just one more story before we get to the guns. I know some of you are already writing in the comments shut up and show us the guns. One more story. When I landed in New Orleans, I knew that that was the home of the World War II Museum, I'd heard about it. And as I got off the plane, this is what greeted me as soon as I walked off the plane, this was the sign that was like an entire wall. And because we were on a short leash, meaning we had to get in and get out really quickly, a long ride home, I decided I want to go back and see this museum.

 

I Want to Bring the Museum to You

I Want to Bring the Museum to You

And so that reminded me I want to say thank you to our patreons who will make it possible for me to go back to the museum. I'm trying to get permission to go in after hours. What I'd like to do is film the museum and talk about the guns used throughout the war by walking through the museum. They call it the road to Berlin, they also have a section the road to Tokyo. And walk through the museum and just give you a sampling of what's there. For those of you who can't attend, maybe overseas or physical limitations keep you from traveling, my goal is to bring that museum to you. So stay tuned. And thank you to our patrons who make it possible for us to travel and do videos such as these that will be educational. 

 

Giveaways Coming Soon

Giveaways Coming Soon

Now for the patreons I'm going to do a separate giveaway for some of these items such as this cane. We'll contact you separately and talk about some of the giveaways. But we have this cane and I wanted to show you this, if you watch my last video about the Paterson, I called it the gun that won the West. Turns out the Don had this in his -- well it was on his kitchen counter. But these according to these people, these are the guns that won the West. And that certainly is more than just the Paterson. So we'll be giving this -- Oh, here's a Paterson right here. Check out, you can tell by the profile. Cool. That might be a Walker right there because it has the longer cylinder. And turns out some people disputed my claims and said it was the Winchester that won the West. Well, we're going to give this away to one of our patreons, it comes with this booklet. But that'll be another giveaway that was in Don's collection. He also has some prints more than just these. But this is an award given in the name of the fewer and this looks like a police award. And then also some really cool prints that we're going to give away, so our patreons can stay tuned. Thank you for your contributions, we're going to put it to good use in our travel to New Orleans to film the museum. And we'll have these giveaways for you in the next week or so. 

 

Fine! I'll Shut Up 

Hey, now I know you're screaming shut up and show us guns. So come with me, I got my gloves. Let's go check out the guns. 

 

I Didn't Achieve My Goal

I Didn_t Achieve My Goal

So here's how I spent my Saturday. My goal, you can see more boxes of guns and this is not all of them. But my goal was to lay out all 700 guns. And guess what? I didn't make it. This is about 200 guns of the 700. Again, I wanted to get all 700 laid out on this floor so I can say here's what this collection looked like but it's not going to happen. I'm going to go ahead and just highlight some of these and believe it or not these boxes, I haven't even opened them yet.

 

Please Give Me a Chance To Work Through

So each one of them was wrapped in a bag like this and stored in bank vaults. And I haven't even gotten through them all. So please don't write and say do you have one of these? Do you have one of these? Because give me a chance to get all these opened. I'll log them all in by serial number, make and model, and then we'll start putting them on the site and then I can better answer your question. But I'd say the average gun price here is going to be right around $1,000. And you can see that he really liked P38s. 

 

All P38s

All P38s

So let's just take this row, start at the top and come all the way down, you can just see these are all P38s. And then when I ran out of room, I started back up at the top and I did another row of P38s. Now one interesting story here is I was told he did not collect any American guns, he only collected German pistols.

 

Somebody Lied!

Somebody Lied!

And lo and behold, look at this one. Seems to me somebody lied. There's an American gun, but guess what? So this is a Parkerized Ithaca 1911, issued late war period, but when I turned it over, you can see that it was used by the Water Police in Mannheim. That's not Mannheim, Pennsylvania, that is Mannheim, Germany. So he was stationed over there and I would just imagine that when the war was over, the Americans of course, left a lot of equipment, including these pistols in Germany. And so the Germans used them. Now I would think they had plenty of P38s and Lugers to spare. But with all the GIs bringing those home maybe they needed to use some of the GIs guns or maybe they traded. Anyway, this was used for the Water Police. 

 

Victory Models

Victory Models

Now here's the other example. Here you can see these are the little bags they came in. I'm going to put them back into the bag. But these are actually victory models. You can always tell the Victory model, it's a Smith and Wesson by the way, and it has a V prefix. So that's a victory model, and there's the serial number. These are tags, which I want to leave on there, you can see the condition of the gun, fortunately, that he really greased them up heavily look at the amount of grease in here. 

 

He really greased these up

He really greased these up

It's going to be a full time job just to have somebody clean these up. So I probably am going to say, hey, I'll give you a little bit of a discount if you clean it yourself, because it would take me a month to clean all these guns. Some of the boards are just filled with grease. But the good news is because of Katrina, and as I mentioned, the humid air, these would have fared a lot -- look at my gloves already. These would have fared a lot worse, if it hadn't been for all the grease that he put on it. 

 

German Proofs

German Proofs

But the point I was going to make is this one is Bavarian Municipal Police, you can barely see it. So again, a GI gun that was left behind and picked up and used by the German Police. 

 

The Second Victory

The Second Victory

And here's the second Victory. Okay, let me show you the V as in Victory. This one doesn't have as much grease. Actually, this one is pretty clean. And this one, you can see the German proofs, that's actually post war Eagle N proof, that's not an Nazi Eagle N, but it's a post war Eagle N. So it was used by the Germans after the war. 

 

Where are my Knowledgeable Germans

Where are my Knowledgeable Germans

And you see here, Geco marking that is a German retailer, I have no idea why the Geco marking would be on there. But I'm sure some of you knowledgeable Germans will tell us. I can't imagine they were selling these in retail stores at the end of the war. 

 

They were worried about an Insurgence

They were worried about an insurgency, which is why people like Don Andrews were over there. And my father-in-law in fact, he was in Germany right after the war in 1946. And they were over there. And by the way, everything was calm, and the German people were very gracious to the American soldiers. But they were still worried about an insurrection or rioting and trying to keep everything calm. 

 

Would Be In Excellent Condition

But look at the case hardening on this one. The trigger, I can tell the grease, he could barely pull that back. So the workings are dried grease in there. And that just needs to be cleaned up. But you can tell this would be in excellent condition because of the case hardening. And that's all original. The trigger and the hammer are very stiff. 

 

The Pancake Gun

The Pancake Gun

Now check out this gun. I call this the pancake gun. I think it's designed to go in your pocket you can see the folding trigger. Remember the Paterson had the same thing. This has a German crown proof. Now this gun was maybe made for export and again, I think it's immediate post war, World War I that is. German made, this is made by Sauer, I've never seen one before. It looks like a 25 caliber. And they must have been sent into North America, Russia and England. So they had an export to those countries. I'll have to research this a little bit because I don't know what it is. I've not seen one of these before. So I'm going to have to research a little bit, but I'm thinking it's designed to fit in your pocket. And it's thin. In fact, it's about wallet size. And then also that won't catch on your clothing when you pull it out. He actually had several of these. 

 

Several Little Pistols

So speaking of the 25 calibers, I mean again, this is only about 1/3 of the guns. I still have a lot to go through but you can see the number of little pistols he had. Now these are going to be fairly inexpensive. That is the 1940 eagle and proof so this was wartime production. Again, not seen one of these before. And it says unknown manufacturer and looks like that's 22 caliber, but he has a lot of these little pistols.

 

Lots of Police Guns!

Several Little Pistols

And this one, it looks like it has police marking. So this would be like a backup piece in your pocket. That's definitely a police marking there. Again, I mentioned he has a lot of police guns. If people like 25 calibers, this is 32, but if you like 25 calibers, if you look at these, this whole row you can see a lot of the -- here's a Czech duo. This is dated 1945. So that's pretty rare because by then they had stopped making them. Czechoslovakia, most of it was taken by the Russians, but not all of it. But this was probably a GI capture gun right at the end of the war. You see those? 

 

A Mars 25 Caliber and Holster

A Mars 25 Caliber and Holster

Here's a Mars, a 25 caliber Mars. It's got Czech, looks like a Czech Lion. So that was probably the Czechoslovakian factory. You see the plumb finish on it. There's an earlier Czech duo. And this one is dated 1941. That's the Czech Lion. And there's a little bitty holster that goes with it. That's kind of cool. Actually, on the back duo. So it goes with the duo. 

 

Scrooge McDuck of Pistols

I'm going to highlight a few guns. But first, let me say something about the condition. And by the way, Randy, my camera man said I look like Scrooge McDuck who swims in his gold. I wanted to lay on top of these and just kind of swim through him. But I'm in a sea of pistols here. And again, this is only a third, the rest are going into storage for a while we'll bring them out when these are all sold. Because we can't possibly handle all these guns at once. 

 

The FN Slide

The FN Slide

Here's a good example though. So I look at this one and I told you there's a lot of police guns. First of all, the large AC most of you would not recognize unless you're a P38 collector. That would mean that it was an FN slide. FN was the browning Belgian slide so that was made in the FN browning factory, Fabrique Nationale. It's a dual tone and the condition is not too bad except for here on the barrel. Dual tone means phosphate and blued. 

 

Oooh! The Damage

You can see the damage being in one of these cloths and then it gets wet or moist from being in a safe. And again two months no air conditioning, humidity is about 99% salt air by the way, salt water, the bag makes an impression. This probably a restore could clean that up but then again the finish would never be original again. So we're going to sell them as is and this will be a nice gun for somebody, but actually I think I said this was a police gun but I believe that is actually Waffen stamped. There is a police Eagle F in this group that looks a lot like this. It's a dual-tone police Eagle F and it also has the same kind of water damage to it. A real shame. I hate to even show you this stuff. 

 

Be Sure To Have a Dehumidifier

By the way, if you don't have a dehumidifier, I'm not selling the dehumidifiers but we do make them available because I'm a firm believer. I put a dehumidifier in all of my safes.

 

I Can tell this was a Beautiful Gun

But let's take a look at this shameful PPK. This is an eagle C. I think one of my Peter videos I had an Eagle C, that was in the million serial range. The one that I had had two matching magazines. This one was I can tell was a beautiful gun. And then this was recent damage. The rust was allowed to stay on there and began to eat into the finish is one thing because you then you could restore it, but it eats into the metal and leaves pits. So the restoration of something like this is a very expensive project. Others are not so bad. 

 

This was a Beautiful P38

This was a Beautiful P38

BYF43, so that's Mauser 1943. This one is not too bad. You see some deep pitting right there. So probably the bag was moist there and just laid up against that metal. A little pitting here, a little pitting here, but generally, still a very collectible gun. In fact, you could see this was a beautiful P38 at one point. Now just has a little bit of scars on its face, kind of like me. You know what, after a bit of age, that's what you begin to look like. 

 

Late War Radom

And then this beautiful, late war Radom, you can see has the wooden grips, it has the phosphate finish and you can see the water damage on the surface. Again, this is not too bad. It could be cleaned up. It still has value. Again around the muzzle.

 

A Dural PP - Fail!

One of the surprises in this collection, I actually never saw one before, you can tell right away that it's dural aluminium. It has like a greenish look to it, that's anodised paint on there not bluing, and I thought oh a dural PP. You can see the condition with the grease, all over it. But what made this stand out to me is bottom release. So I'm thinking oh my gosh, this is a 9-millimeter. A lot of grease, it needs to be cleaned up. A 9-millimeter dural frame is absolutely unheard of. I've never seen one before because the dural frames even on a 32 caliber we're not safe, in that, they were too light and they cracked and were flawed. So it was an experiment that didn't really take off. 

 

They tried again with the Dural Frame

Now they did make them post war and I think they made some improvements in the metal, but the early durals were not strong enough. In fact, if you drill the button right here for the mag release, it weakens the frame and makes it unsafe. So a 9-millimeter dural frame, I'm sure they only made a few experimentally. So this is an extremely rare gun. I've never seen one before. Not even Peter had one of these. Oh, look at the grease in there. I need to take a Q-tip like you're cleaning out your ears and get that grease out of there. But again, I probably won't have time to do 700 guns cleaned up. Look at the grease in that ejection port. I can't really get a good shot of the bore, but if I did, you'd find the grease all down inside there as well. 

 

War time Beretta with a Dural Frame

War time Beretta with a Dural Frame

Another rare gun. This of course is a 1934. This is a model 1935, 1940 dated. This is a dural frame as well. So the dural frame on a war time Beretta went to the Italian Army. This is also a very rare gun. I've not seen one before. I have to do a little bit of research because I'm not sure of the value. 

 

A DRP that Survived Katrina

A DRP that Survived Katrina

Here's another surprise. Again, these were the PPKs. This is a DRP, I did a whole video on the DRP, that is the German Postal System. And this was a gun that went to the Postal Inspectors. This one survived Katrina. You can see the condition on this one was not damaged at all. 

 

Surprise!

Surprise

But this is a nice surprise. This is a PP in the holster, and you can see that it says Bahnschutz, basically railway police in Stuttgart, 1940 Railway Police. These were Akah. Usually they came as a PP but they do have some railway police that are PPKs. These were dated. I have several of these in my collection. But these are dated 1940. The holster is dated 1940. And these, like the SS guns, a lot of times these are mistaken for an SS gun because they numbered the slide, and they often numbered the magazine. I believe this magazine is not numbered. I see them numbered sometimes on the spine, sometimes on the side. But often they come with two matching magazines. So if you find a gun like this, which has a matching slide frame and magazine, you often are going to say oh, that's an SS gun. 

 

Look Out For My Book

Well, if you buy my book that's coming out hopefully in a couple of weeks, I talk about the differences how you can tell this is a railway police gun. The 1940 would be a clue. And also the holster would be a clue. But this is not SS, this is railway police. 

 

Another Beautiful PPK

Another Beautiful PPK

Here's another example. This was a beautiful PPK, you can see the damage here but still collectible. Somebody will love it. And then this one, this nice 22, I said oh here's a nice 22 with the box magazine, correct 22 caliber magazine. But when I turned it over, you can see the salt water spotting on that one. 

 

Was Don in the Sauer Factory?

Was Don in the Sauer Factory

Let's take a look over here. Just a couple more and we'll wrap it up. We see also a lot of Sauers. He has a whole row of Sauers, and what you notice right away I mentioned he was in factories at the end of the war. He must have been in the Sauer factory because I see a lot of these really late war guns. Here's a 9-millimeter, extremely rare. There's the serial number. They added a J, maybe it was probably experimental. I've not seen one like this before. No damage, but it looks like it was never finished. There are no proof marks. So again, I think in the factory at the end 9-millimeter Sauer, never saw one before. 

 

Late war Sauer Guns

Late war Sauer Guns

This one again 512, notice the serial numbers. 500,000 were at the end of the war. This one however does show damage. The white grips I believe are post war. This one does have damage to it but again a lot of late war Sauers. Here's another one probably brought home by a GI. It's Germany 1945 and then probably the initials of a GI that would be my best guess. And you can see where the bag was up against the finish here again. Like the salt water eating away, that's a zinc bottom. I don't see a serial number so that was added later. So this does not have a German serial number but the GI who brought it back probably had to put a serial number on it but this is a vet bring back. Here's another one. Again, no finish end the post war grips I would guess and again, the serial number. This one is 511 I think. So everything in the 500,000 range was in the factory at the end. I'm convinced that Don Andrews was in the factory at the end picking up these guns. 

 

Police Guns - HSCs

The last group of guns I want to mention there's a lot of these HSCs and those are Mauser 1914 - 1934. The vast majority are police guns by the way. These ones with the black grips all the way at the top. Those are all post-war. It says French put together, so the French took over the Mauser factory, used them for their own police. Here's one you can see the staining and the unusual pitting pattern here, and then the other side is really poorly done. You can see the bag marks. 

 

You'll be able to identify these on the Website

So when you see these on the website in this condition, you'll know it came from Don Andrews’s collection. He has notes about it but this is a police Eagle L, so this was issued to the police and somebody is going to love it. 

 

Unboxing Incomplete but we have some Variety

We have a couple of flare guns that will be coming out those are actually in pretty good shape and then we have some Lugers. You just see a short stack again like the pancake gun. This is a short stack of Lugers. I'm hoping there'll be more Lugers in the box. So far these have been mostly between the war police guns but hopefully there'll be some more Lugers. But again, small caliber German pistols seemed to be what he specialized in. 

 

A Mystery Percussion Pistol

A Mystery Percussion Pistol

Alright, and I thought I was going but this is one more mystery gun. Check this out. So this is a percussion pistol. I think it's 66 caliber. You might say that's a shotgun, but I think it's 66 counter caliber. And yet it has an eagle stamp. Now that's an Eagle S/P which is a Nazi era re-work stamp. I have no idea if that's fake, it's on there twice. If you were going to fake it, why would you use an Eagle S/P since nobody knows what that is? So if you know why Germany would be stamping it. Maybe they were just gathering up all the guns that civilians had and re-stamping them and putting them in storage? I don't know. But I certainly can't explain a Nazi era 1940 eagle on a percussion pistol in 66 caliber. 

 

Stick Around, We Have More Guns Coming

Hey, thanks for watching. I have a lot more boxes to open and more guns to go through. But I'm going to get started tomorrow putting these on our website. So make sure you like and subscribe to our channel. As I go through these guns, I'm going to be highlighting anything that I find is really unusual that I want to bring to you but in the meantime, I have a lot of standard guns. That will be a little bit cheaper than our average gun. Some of you have said you know I can't afford anything on your website. Hopefully, these under $1,000 will be guns that you can afford. Thanks for watching. We'll be coming back to you real soon.