- Location
- On a resonably direct route in NS
This was brought up in another thread, and I didn't want to de-rail the Luger love with pictures of cheap Tokarevs.
The post (linked above) points out a deficiency in a Firearm Registration Certificate for a [beautiful, I'll-never-own-its-Prohibited-ass] P08, which does not include the series letter [script] i in addition to the four-digit serial number. Thus it is almost assured to be a duplicate to another P08 with the same number, but a different series.
Quite often military serial numbers are more than a short series of digits, but can include a factory or nation code, a pre-fix, a series block, a date, even a pictorial symbol. Without *ALL* of this information, you are not nailing down a specific gun. ‘Worthless without pic.s’ is posted frequently for a very good reason.
IF the Registry is good for anything, IF it can be used to identify fire-arms uniquely for law enforcement, even as data for collectors and historians, then it has to be complete and accurate. It can easily be shown, however, that it is not.
The full identification of this TT would be: RB3857 Izhevsk 1944. The CFC has given it as: P3857.
Okay fine, the Cyrillic R looks like a Latin P, so that's understandable, but they skipped the second letter (and didn't even put in a space – as if it never existed). In this case the factory isn't absolutely necessary, since there is no over-lap between Tula and Izhevsk production. The year *is* essential, as there could very well be an RB3857 in any other year the Soviets followed this scheme (1938-53).
This one happens to have letters which match in both writing systems, so they've lucked out. No notation of the 1946 year (or factory).
Here an OB2016 Izhevsk 1951 becomes just plain 2016. They didn't even put in the O (which stands in both alphabets), as they did before, or even mistake it for a zero; just ignored.
This is a Hungarian M48 version of the TT, serial CD 5529 [nation code] 02 [year] 52, which the CFC reads as 55290252.
Finally a Yugoslavian M57, C-85377 but the Certificate just gives 85377.
Other errors and omissions abound in the Registry. Whether it's laziness or a deficit in understanding, whether the information was gathered by the CFC (or its Verifiers), the importers, or called in by the fire-arm owners, there is a real lack of motivation to Register full and accurate data. (Perhaps they know it isn't really good for anything after all.)
I have one-and-a-half dozen Tokarev pistols collected, listing with 114mm, 115mm (most), or 116mm barrels. They all measure 117mm when *I* do it. Except the .22LR «Sportowy», measuring 121mm but written 120mm.
Most of these TT -type pistols give the Make as Tokarev, but strictly that should only apply to the Soviet ones. The rest should be Radom, Fémáru, Zastava, and others. Chinese versions are correctly identified as Norinco. If they bothered to include a Model as well, I bet that many TT-30, M48, PW wz.33, T54, and others, would ALL be listed as TT-33.
I have other Certificates for modern commercial arms, which include letters, dashes, and spaces in the serial numbers, so I don't know why they didn't work in some of the examples I gave. I've also got commercial Certificates (current and from the former Long Gun Registry) which fail on pretty much any heading: Make, Action, Barrel Length (by a large margin), Serial Number.
If you're collecting, if you're interested in the history of military surplus, don't go by what THEY tell you; do your own research.
The post (linked above) points out a deficiency in a Firearm Registration Certificate for a [beautiful, I'll-never-own-its-Prohibited-ass] P08, which does not include the series letter [script] i in addition to the four-digit serial number. Thus it is almost assured to be a duplicate to another P08 with the same number, but a different series.
Quite often military serial numbers are more than a short series of digits, but can include a factory or nation code, a pre-fix, a series block, a date, even a pictorial symbol. Without *ALL* of this information, you are not nailing down a specific gun. ‘Worthless without pic.s’ is posted frequently for a very good reason.
IF the Registry is good for anything, IF it can be used to identify fire-arms uniquely for law enforcement, even as data for collectors and historians, then it has to be complete and accurate. It can easily be shown, however, that it is not.
The full identification of this TT would be: RB3857 Izhevsk 1944. The CFC has given it as: P3857.
Okay fine, the Cyrillic R looks like a Latin P, so that's understandable, but they skipped the second letter (and didn't even put in a space – as if it never existed). In this case the factory isn't absolutely necessary, since there is no over-lap between Tula and Izhevsk production. The year *is* essential, as there could very well be an RB3857 in any other year the Soviets followed this scheme (1938-53).
This one happens to have letters which match in both writing systems, so they've lucked out. No notation of the 1946 year (or factory).
Here an OB2016 Izhevsk 1951 becomes just plain 2016. They didn't even put in the O (which stands in both alphabets), as they did before, or even mistake it for a zero; just ignored.
This is a Hungarian M48 version of the TT, serial CD 5529 [nation code] 02 [year] 52, which the CFC reads as 55290252.
Finally a Yugoslavian M57, C-85377 but the Certificate just gives 85377.
Other errors and omissions abound in the Registry. Whether it's laziness or a deficit in understanding, whether the information was gathered by the CFC (or its Verifiers), the importers, or called in by the fire-arm owners, there is a real lack of motivation to Register full and accurate data. (Perhaps they know it isn't really good for anything after all.)
I have one-and-a-half dozen Tokarev pistols collected, listing with 114mm, 115mm (most), or 116mm barrels. They all measure 117mm when *I* do it. Except the .22LR «Sportowy», measuring 121mm but written 120mm.
Most of these TT -type pistols give the Make as Tokarev, but strictly that should only apply to the Soviet ones. The rest should be Radom, Fémáru, Zastava, and others. Chinese versions are correctly identified as Norinco. If they bothered to include a Model as well, I bet that many TT-30, M48, PW wz.33, T54, and others, would ALL be listed as TT-33.
I have other Certificates for modern commercial arms, which include letters, dashes, and spaces in the serial numbers, so I don't know why they didn't work in some of the examples I gave. I've also got commercial Certificates (current and from the former Long Gun Registry) which fail on pretty much any heading: Make, Action, Barrel Length (by a large margin), Serial Number.
If you're collecting, if you're interested in the history of military surplus, don't go by what THEY tell you; do your own research.
No surprise here.
