The Abode of McThag

A problem with having a modern gun for carry is the original manufacturer is the sole supplier of magazines for them because the place you normally get them cheaper is the actual manufacturer!

Pistol mags are hovering around $43ish for our M&P 9 2.0 Compacts.  Based on the markings, Mecgar makes them and they'd be about $30 each... but S&W appears to have a no-compete clause in the contract.

Having gotten accustomed to $15 magazines for AR's, it's a bit of sticker shock.

Most of the handguns around here get by on three or four magazines per gun because they don't get out much.  Some as few as two magazines!

I think I should have more available for the guns that get shot more regular like. 

We will endeavor to persevere! 

I have a spreadsheet that tells me how many of what kind of magazine we own.

That doesn't tell us where we left them.

Harvey complained about constantly downloading one of her carry magazines to load at the gun range.

That's just extra wear and tear, so I said to use one of the other M&P magazines we had laying around.

Turns out, she already had the only one not in actual use in her range bag already.

We have a "pesky" number of them scattered about in case of boarding action and all but one of the 17 round magazines is loaded and prepped.  All of the 15 round 2.0 Compact (distinct from the 12 round 1.0 Compact mags which are now 2.0 SUBcompact mags) magazines are in use from us carrying them.

Well.

Looks like we're going magazine shopping soon! 

In my experience... (second only to "no shit, there we were...")

I've found that Colt has a better trigger out of the box, but that the revolver will go out of time faster than a Smith & Wesson.

S&W's triggers "wear in" to being very good after a few hundred rounds, but can be irritating right out of the box.  S&W tends to be more durable than Colt once you have years and years of shooting it.

This position is, apparently, controversial.

It is also based on a very small sample size, I haven't bought many new revolvers.

Whenever anyone questions why you've bought any particular gun just reply, "because it delights me you joyless scold!"

I've had this conversation about my .45 Colt Anaconda a couple of time and I am fully aware that they made and make them in .44 Magnum.

Don't care.

That giant gun in the, by modern standards, under-powered round gives me the giggles and I really can't see anything changing that.

Strangely, I never see them complain about a S&W 25-5  when the Model 29 is the same gun except in .44 Magnum...

I get the same delight from my useless .25 ACP guns.

I went out of my way to find a .38 Super Gov't Model in as plain-Jane trim as I could get and then "ruined" it by putting a short trigger and arched mainspring housing on it.  It delights me to do so.

Having a clone of an M16, M16A1, M16A2 and M16A4 delights me.

The XM177E2 clone delights me even though I had to make a short barrel rifle of it and am only a fraction of an inch shorter than a 16" barrel with the moderator screwed onto the end of the 11.5" barrel. 

The purple AR delights me.

The people who are grimly utilitarian about gun ownership should really start relaxing.

Once your needs are met, Maslow, you can move up the pyramid. 

A thread about swords on Arfcom got me thinking...

Swords are sidearms, not primary weapons most of the time.  It's the weapon you pull when your main weapon goes tits up.

It's a weapon to show your status.

That's not how most of us gamers did it most of the time...

When we did, however, we hardly ever had cause to use them.

I've got so many character sheets that have secondary weapons that I never used.

Not a sword when I had a polearm.

Not a pistol when I had a rifle.

But...  You never knew when the GM would decide to break your main weapon and better to have it and not need it that to need it and not have it.

Where have I heard that before?

There's a local gun shop that's doing door-buster Black Friday deals.

Among them are $99 Glocks.

Besides not being willing to engage in hand to hand combat to get close enough to the door when they open to snag one before they sell out...

My Glock itch is fully scratched.

The Glock 21 is my lesson to not trade off a gun for stupid reasons.

The two Glock 17's are nostalgia purchases to fill the holes left by my first two Gen1's.

The Glock 45 is my "modern" Glock, which I mainly got because Glock offered Blue Label guns to veterans.

S&W M&P are my plastic fantastics of choice.

The things are barely on the shelves and someone has already managed to make a switch for one despite all of the anti-Glock Switch provisions Glock made to change from Gen5 to GenV. 

With enough effort, any semi-automatic firearm can be converted to full auto or select fire.

Even the more complicated 1911 has been so converted.  All the way back in the 1920's!

PS: You will note that I did not tag this post with the "crime" label.  This Glock Switch appears to have been made by a licensed SOT/FFL, and is thus perfectly legal.

After struggling with the Otis tool, I wondered if there was a better way.

Real-Avid must have as well!

It works so much better!

You put the button on the post sticking out horizontally:

Then you push down against the bar, that levers the base off the little tabs.

Then you put the hole in the baseplate over the vertical post and slide the body back:

It drops the baseplate and locking plate into the little tray and you just lift the body up and the spring remains controlled.

You can reverse that last step to reassemble them!

Works with Glock 21 magazines too!

This is so much better than the Otis one, I highly recommend!

The underside is also a magazine unloader.

The Otis brand Glock magazine disassembly tool arrived today!

It works really well on magazines that have been disassembled before and not at all for the first take down!

For the first take down you need a flat-blade screwdriver and come in from the back.

This will deform the little retainer nubbins enough that the tool will have enough leverage next time. 

How it's supposed to work:  You depress the subfloor button with the nubbin of the tool...

Then you lever it against the front wall of the magazine until the floorplate clears the subfloor button.

It's much harder than it needs to be.

The newer magazines are much harder to get apart than the 1994 models I have here too!  Perfection! I guess.

I also found an older magazine loader in my pile of things.

The new one has a texture and is slightly shorter.

They moved the logo too!

No.  You cannot put a lanyard on your Glock P80 Classic.  The hole is missing.

Yes!  Your Glock P80 Classic does fit in an M7/M9 tanker holster!

My Classic Edition Glock 17 arrived today!

Interestingly, it's not called a Glock 17 anywhere on the gun's markings or the box.

The model number on the label is P80.

Tupperware!

My example appears to be nearly unfired if it was fired at all.

My low-ball bid was $350 (plus shipping, insurance, taxes and transfer fees).  The original owner paid a bit more:

The trigger is standard Glock and breaks at about 7 lb.

The magazines are the same as what came with my Glock 45, but with black instead of orange followers. 

It's 0.6 oz. lighter than a Gen 2; 1 lb. 8.8 oz. vs 1 lb. 9.4 oz. with an empty magazine.  Could that be the metal, tritium sights on my Gen 2 vs the plastic?

The slides will interchange.

The only real visible differences are the slide marking and grip textures.  I find I really like the old texture and contour.  It fits my hand really well.

Something I think is neat is the tooling left a ghost of a mark where the lanyard hole should be.

The capsule version of Glock 17 (superficial visual frame) differences.

Gen 1: Pebble texture all around on the grip.  Only the Glock 17 was ever Gen 1!

Gen 2: Waffle pattern added to front and back of grip.

Gen 3: Awful finger bumps added.

Gen 4: Removable back-strap added.

Gen 5: Awful finger bumps removed. 

Glocks are referred to by this generation scheme even if the first generation of a model is in a different overall generation.

The first Glock 21 is a Gen 2 even though there were never any Gen 1 Glock 21's.

The first Glock 45 is a Gen 5 even though there were never any Gen 1-4 Glock 45's.

It's actually quite simple. 

Since I accidentally bought a P80 instead of a Gen 1 Classic, I set out to find what the differences were.

The differences in the Lipsey's guns are very slight.  Basically just the markings on the slide.

But something that stood out about the Gen 1 Classic was that the US Patent No. was missing from the right side of the grip.

A genuine Austrian P80 doesn't have that number.

I'm thinking that Lipsey's and Glock got a little cheap here.  The slide markings are probably a lot easier to change than the mold for the frame, so they didn't bother changing the mold to add the US Pat. No. 

I now join Marv in the "surely someone will outbid me" unexpectedly winning a low-ball auction club.

Sometime soon a Lipsey's exclusive Glock 17 Gen 1 P80 will be arriving at my handiest FFL.

On the plus side, I won with a low-ball.

On the down side, I will have to spend the money!  Spent...  I paid them already.

Another oops here was I wasn't looking for the P80 version of the Lipsey's exclusive retro reissues.  I wanted the clone of the 86-88 US version; the Gen 1 Classic.

On the up side, the P80 is supposedly the more desirable of the two reissues.

On the negative side, it has lost value against the MSRP from five years ago.

I'm guessing about a week for shipping, I'll keep y'all posted. 

I was singing in the shower and had an epiphany!

The Lipsey's Gen 1 Classic is a Gen 3 in all but name and differs only in the frame.

That would make it a representative example for nostalgia purposes and I realized that my Gen 2 is closer to a Gen 1 in most respects, except for the frame.

I already have a representative example!

Nostalgia is actually served already.

Apparently, my Gen 2 slide will fit and function on the Gen 3 style Classic frame and there's a couple for sale in the $150ish range.  Seems a cheaper way to get my itch scratched. 

When the gunshop in Clearwater told me $1,000 for a Gen 1 Glock in mediocre condition with one incorrect magazine, I felt they were asking too much.

This auction:

Puts lie to their claim that one in good condition with the box and accessories is worth two grand.

$1,326 for two correct mags, (mismatched) case, and all accessories.  That's a little short of two grand. 

But, as with all things, an item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it and I'm not willing to pay for $1,000 for a Gen 1 when the clones are hovering in the $600 range.

Lots of collectors don't want to admit it, but a clone market DOES affect the price of the real thing. 

We canvassed the local gun shops today.

It ended up being a ride in the car with friends with a meal at the end rather than a purchase a gun.

Which was a surprise, because when Willard and I are looking for something specific, that usually means Marv will end up buying something when he wasn't looking at all. 

No shop had what Willard was looking for.

One shop had what I was looking for. 

A mid-88 made Glock 17.1!

No tupperware, no brush, no owner's manual, no loading tool, one, incorrect, magazine.

$1,000.

How about no?

I'm watching two Glock 17.1's on Gunbroker that are well south of a grand with two days to go.

There's one with the tupperware case, instructions, manual, one magazine and missing the accessories for $1,800.  No bids.

I am not so enamored of the OG to pay much of a premium to get it.  Maybe if I tracked down one of the guns I bought new back when, but...  I didn't save the serial numbers.

Looks like I am "settling" for the Lipsey's Gen 1 Classic.  Those are getting a cachet all their own, so it won't end in a loss. 

They did not make the Gen 1 Glock for very long.  Lemme rephrase that, they didn't offer them for the USA for very long, just 1986 to 1988, though there are 1989 made Gen 1 guns out there (they appear to be foreign contract guns not US market).

For some reason the Gen 2 guns are frequently thought to be Gen 1.

Here's a handy primer to help determine what generation you have: https://blog.talongungrips.com/talon/how-to-identify-your-glocks-generation/

I see this a lot on Gunbroker.  Which is frustrating when I am shopping for a Gen 1.

I have a Gen 2 Glock 17 already, 1994 made LEO marked magazines.

The huge difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2 is the checkering on the front and back of the grip.

All of the Gen 2's I've seen have had the hole for a lanyard.

The Glock 17 Gen 1 Classic does not have a hole for a lanyard at the back of the grip.

My original did!

Except that it didn't.  The lanyard hole doesn't appear until the Gen 2.

Neither of my Gen 1's, nor the Austrian P80, have that hole.

But I remember it being there.

I remember attaching my lanyard to my G17 when we went to the Czech border.

Which makes me wonder...  Did I drill a hole for it?

Probably not and I probably didn't use my lanyard either.

It's strange.

Update:

I hit Glock Talk and found a thread on this topic and found:

Some do, some don't and they begin to appear sometime in '87.  Late enough for mine.

My first Glock 17 was purchased at the Patch Rod and Gun Club sometime in 1989.  I don't remember exactly.

My second Glock 17 was purchased in mid 1991.  I think.

I remember that the one I bought in Iowa from Jacobsen's Gun Center had the adjustable rear sight.  Sporting purposes requirements and all.

I don't remember if the one I bought in Germany had the adjustable sight or not.

I want to say it did, but...

Did the guns that were sold on post in Germany have to conform to the import regulations?

No idea.

If yes, then it did have adjustable sights.  If not...  It could be either way.

The Lipsey's Classic reissue of the 1st gen Glock has the fixed rear sight.

Since this quest is to have (a clone of) the same gun I had when I went to the Czech-German border I want the same rear sight it had.

AND I CAN'T REMEMBER!!! 

I doubt that anyone will be able to say, definitively, if I got it wrong or not.