That looks a Lot Like Tom!

Hey guys, I'm back from my vacation finally. I had a great week away and you guys were able to watch three update videos. And thanks for being loyal supporters of our channel but I'm ready to rock and roll because I'm back in the office and I have a quickie, I wanted to show you this. Some people might call this clickbait. Now one thing I've never been accused of before is being clickbait. Now if you put one of my daughters on there that might be clickbait.

 

Who is in that Picture?

I don't know if you recognize the picture, but that is my senior picture. And the picture next to it is a German soldier. Now I have to thank Gary who's one of our subscribers and a loyal viewer. He actually wrote to me while I was away. Actually the day I came back, I got an email from Gary saying, have you seen this picture on eBay? So the picture of a soldier is actually on eBay. I'd bid on it, but it's only at $15 and I don't want it that bad. 

 

Do We Need a DNA Test?

But I'm very curious if this guy's last name, if this soldier might be Berg, B-E-R-G. I don't know because I can't track that down. But if he was, that's my mother's maiden name, it's Berg. And so maybe I need to do a DNA test to see if my father is really my father. Just kidding! We actually did ancestry.com and I do know my father is my father, but this guy sure looks like a relative of mine. But again German soldier next to my senior high school picture.

 

Shout to the Forgotten Weapons Family

The second thing that happened while I was gone, you all know the book, many of you have already ordered it. But I sent a copy to Ian at Forgotten Weapons and lo and behold he did a book review. A very positive review. Just wanted to do a shout out to all you Forgotten Weapons fans, and to say thank you to Ian for reviewing the book.

 

Books available on Amazon

And as he pointed out, they're available on Amazon.com and in fact, if you're overseas outside the United States, I recommend going to Amazon because in many cases you can get a lot cheaper in terms of shipping than you can from us; or if you're in the United States, certainly go to our website and order your copy today. 

 

This late war box walked in

The third thing that happened while I was gone other than you guys enjoying my videos, this came in and I wanted to show it to you. Now first of all, I've shown you lots of boxed PPs and PPKs and you know what the boxes look like. They look a lot like this. Actually they look exactly like this. But this is a rare late war box. Let me come a little closer and have you take a look. 

 

Check out the Packaging

You can see this cardboard box. Now this is from early 1943, so it's a wartime box, they were cutting corners. You still have the Green Label. It is numbered to the gun right here. And if we look at the other ones, the embossed PP and PPK, also Walther banner are a lot more pronounced, but here you can see the very light Walther banner and you can see an embossed PP on the cover. And again very, very light cardboard.

This is as good as I've ever seen. You'll see how they put these together. They're not even glued together, they just put a little staple on there, so very cheaply made. Same here; you can see the gap. Of course in the earlier ones you would never see like a gap here, they were well sealed. But for being as flimsy as it is and as old as it is, this is an incredible find and to me very valuable. So I'm planning on holding on to this one, just because you never find them in this condition. It's all about the condition. The cleaning rod, nothing special.

 

The Manual in the Package

We've seen those many times before and then the manual, now you're used to this style of manual. This is the more common one in the pre-war and early war. This however, is dated 1 of 43, so it is a late manual and not full color but two color and also a little simpler in design. It's more of a folder than a booklet. On the front, you can see the PP with the finger extension box magazine. I'll just let you peruse this because you may never see one again. There you see the wartime magazine, how to load the magazine, 60 degrees safety so it's a little bit later. It shows the use of the pistol. It also tells me they were still selling commercial guns in 1943. 

 

An Average Man couldn't buy a Gun

Now the average citizen just couldn't go to the local store and buy a gun. I'm assuming you would have to be a party leader or have a permit and a reason to carry a gun. And only, I would think party officials would be allowed to do a private purchase. And by the way, many officers bought their own pistol if there weren't enough to go around, or they just wanted a smaller PP or PPK, they could get a permit to purchase their own sidearm.

And from what I can tell that happened fairly often because most of the capture stories that I hear are this was captured from a German officer. Some of that is embellishment, but I've heard it so many times that it has to be true that the officers, it was common for them, when they were on leave or on furlough, they would get a permit and buy a sidearm and carry it with them. So that would be another reason somebody would want to buy a gun in 1943 and get permission from the Nazi Party. 

 

Let's look at the bottom half of the box and it's Contents

Now let's take a look at the bottom half. You can see it's double boxed. And I don't know that I've seen that before it was so flimsy that I think they double boxed it here, you can see the double layer. Again, the corners, I can see daylight through the corners. So they're just stapled together. Here's a good example. This is the late war tin. Instead of having the factory embossed on here, it's just has the Walther logo. And when we open it up, you see it's just the oil bottle, which is pretty common. I often find oil in there, people find that remarkable but I'm amazed how many times I have. At least a quarter inch or a half inch of oil, this one does not have the oil, and then the cleaning cloth. You can see the inside of the tin; the cleaning cloth has the Walther banner on it. So we know this is the original cleaning cloth. 

 

Now for the Gun Itself

Now if we take a look at the gun itself, by the way, there's the spare mag. Now this magazine, interestingly is a Walther banner only. Probably should have the caliber but again, it probably all came together. They just grabbed the magazine. But this is a magazine from an earlier date, probably 1939, maybe as late as 1940. But again, they threw magazines in bins, the workers reached over and grabbed the spare magazine, they didn't stop and look to make sure it had the caliber. But by 1943 it should be the banner plus the caliber underneath it. 

 

Surprising Magazine Here

Let's see about the magazine in the gun. This one is actually even more of a surprise. This is a high polish Walther banner, so this is even earlier than then the spare. So again, the gun which looks pristine, in a pristine box, seems to have what many collectors would call the wrong magazine. I don't mess with history, it came together. I believe this is the way it left the factory. So I'm going to leave it alone. But in 1943, it should be a dull color magazine like this, or a dull finish magazine like this. And it should have the caliber; here's a picture of what it should look like in 1943. It has the banner and the caliber, this is a high polish, so this actually comes from the 1930s. So technically the wrong magazine, but they came together so let's not mess with history. 

 

Who knows why they decided to go red Grips

We have the red grip, which is a rare variation they did make for a very short period of time including 1943. They made a made a red grip, no idea why, some people have had theories. Who knows, they just decided black was boring. And they tried some red and I think it looks really cool. But that's a rare variation. 

 

A Close up of the Gun

You can see the gun has less than 1% wear where it went in and out of a holster. You also can see wear here where the gun was shot. The boar by the way is absolutely mint. You see the front strap and the back strap, a little bit of wear. So it was it was shot a few times. Then you see the serial number on the slide and the frame. It's not SS, but remember after serial number 250 or there about, they marked them on both the frame and the slide. So this was after the transition to marking them both places. 

 

Proofings

And then it of course is eagle N marked on the slide, ejection port, and there will be one on the end of the barrel. And let's check that out. And sure enough, there it is, the eagle N. So the eagle N which is test firing proofs in three places on the gun. And they did that right up into the end of production in 1945. 

 

I Saved the Best for Last

So I saved the best for last. The fourth thing that came in while I was gone was a Party Leader PPK. Now I was actually headed home and this sold off the website over the July 4th weekend. Now I knew that it was coming in because I bought it before I left and I had to spend more to get this party leader than I've ever spent before just on the gun. Now obviously I've bought rigs and boxed guns for more.

But I had to spend more to get this Party Leader, but the prices are going and the value of collectibles keeps going up. In fact, it's much like if you look at the real estate market where you are, I just talked to a realtor who said that she got $100,000 over asking price on a house. And there were like four other people who wanted the house. The bottom line is high end houses and collectibles are going for record prices. So all that is to say, the setup is, we put this, actually, Randy listed this over the July 4th weekend, and it sold in 30 minutes. 

 

Record Price, Record Sale

At the price, which was a record price for us, I thought it'd be there for a while. And actually, the opposite happened. Not only did it sell within the first half hour, but we had four to five other people who all wrote and said, oh, I wanted it, do you have another one.?So they are getting harder to find and the prices keep going up. 

 

It's challenging to find Collectibles

I'm not trying to hype this up for you, I'm just letting you know that it's getting difficult to find some of these really high end collectibles. And there are a lot of people out there with money to spend. That's a good thing because it means the economy's good and we all like to hear that. But let me show you an alternative that you might want to consider. 

 

A Pretty good fake, that makes a great Substitute

Today, I wanted to show you this Party Leader PPK because I've actually had this grip for quite a while. I showed it in previous videos, so we've done this before, this is not anything new. But I do want to show it to you again, because I decided it's time to sell it. I've had it for quite a while, probably a year. But this is actually a fake party leader grip. And I've pointed out how you can tell it's a fake, but to be honest, it's really, really hard to tell. And it might be a good substitute if you don't want to spend $10,000 - $15,000 for a real one. This might be something you could put up proudly on display. And let's check out how close to the real thing it is.

 

Hoping it doesn't fall into Unscrupulous Hands

Okay, so this is a real party leader grip that comes out of my collection not for sale! I have to actually keep one or two of them for myself. And this is the fake party leader grip that I've had for quite a while. I'll show you the other side as well. Let's flip them over. And the reason I haven't wanted to sell it is obviously if I put the fake on my website, and I say this is a reproduction, I don't use the word fake. But I will say this is a reproduction party leader grip. How do I know a dealer or an unscrupulous person isn't going to buy it and put it on auction or put it on their website and get $10,000 for it or more?

And the answer is I don't. But I can't keep it forever. I bought it specifically to do a video on how to spot a fake. And we'll go into that a little bit further. But what I wanted to do is not put this on the website, not open it up to the public. But for those of you who I know and trust, if you're interested in this reproduction, party leader grip on a very nice, early PPK, I'm willing to sell this at a fraction of what a real one would be, of course. But again, I want to sell it to somebody who is going to promise they're not going to resell it as real. Sooner or later it may get back into the market. There's nothing I can do about it. But it was made some time ago. And as I said, I've had it for about a year. So fake party leader grip. 

 

Fakes are Really Accessible

Now here's another fake, which these are a lot more accessible. And you can tell right away, the color is not quite right. It's kind of a dull, the eagle is a little bit weak. There's the real party leader grip and there's a fake This is an obvious fake. So in other words, if I were going to gunbroker or an auction, and somebody pictured this, I would know from the picture that it was a reproduction, I can tell from the picture. 

 

AS I said, a damn good Reproduction!

But if I went to gunbroker, and this was on it, or an auction, and they presented it as real, I would believe it was real until I got it at home and I was able to check some of the towels which I'll show you in a minute. Until I got at home I wouldn't have known. Now with many auctions, it's too late. You buy it as real, it turns out to be fake, the seller does not honor any kind of real return, which we do of course, then you just spent $10,000 on a $500 grip.

 

The real party leader Grip

Okay, I've shown you this before, but you never get tired of seeing party leader grips. This is a scale, obviously 1.2 ounces, and they actually vary 1.2- 1.3, obviously with or without the screw but this is the real party leader, grip 1.2 ounces. And again 1.2-1.3 is right but remember that's without the screw in case you're doing that yourself. 

 

Fake vs Real

Here is the really good fake 1.6 ounces. And you can feel it's definitely heavier. It's not Bakelite, it's a heavier material. And then this poor fake is also 1.6. So the two fakes were 1.6 and this one was 1.2. So there is a difference in weight. Now, let me show you another way to tell, which I don't think I've shown you before. Let's take a look at the real one. And a lot of people say, well, the real ones always have the metal insert. And that's true. If you look down inside there, you see the metal insert, which is just a piece of aluminum. It wraps around so that it comes over here. Sometimes it's covered a little bit with the molding, bakelite molding, and over here. So this one has the metal insert, that's important. But also more importantly, take a look at the bottom, see these pieces. Those are rounded, at the top is rounded, the top piece and the bottom piece are rounded.

 

The Poor Fake

Now, this is the poor fake. And yet, there's the metal insert, see the metal insert. Now I don't see it on the side, but I think it's underneath the molding. But you can see it does have a metal insert inside. So they actually perfected that. But notice, these pieces are squared instead of rounded. Let's do them side by side. See rounded and squared. So that's a real easy tell. Again, only if the person selling it would show you the inside of it would you be able to tell. Here is the the better fake. I keep saying fake. 

 

A Better Fake Reproduction

Here's the better reproduction. Again, this one, I don't see any sign of a metal insert. I don't believe this has a metal insert. There's no sign here, no sign here. This one does not have the metal insert. So it's probably easier to make. But again, it's squared and not rounded. So those are the easiest ways to tell. 

 

$10,000! That needs an inspection

But if you're at a gun show or trying to buy something, you have to ask them take it off and take pictures or show you and that's the only way you would be able to tell for sure. And if you're buying one, obviously you want to make sure do you have a hands on inspection, at least a three day inspection period, or I can return it otherwise you shouldn't be spending that kind of money on something that looks this good. Remember you buy something that looks that good, unless you know what you're doing you just lost $10,000.

 

Check out the pictures of my dad on eBay

Hey, thanks for watching. I hope you can like and subscribe to our channel because I have a lot of other really good videos to show you. And also remember if you go to eBay, there's still pictures of my dad available.