Prewar Belgian Hi-Power?

canuck said:
According to Blake Stevens, page 151 "The Browning High Power Automatic Pistol", the Belgians took directorship of (what was left of) the FN factory 3 months after the Normandy invasion and were back producing High Power pistols before the war ended
Also, according to him, the first postwar guns had no mag safety and a letter A prefixing the serial number.

One sure way to know if a pistol is prewar is if the cam slot in the lug on the bottom of the barrel is rounded or squared off - the slots were squared off in the last run of Belgian production (that is, provided the barrel is original!)
Click to expand...

Interesting.

There is no A prefix in the serial number.
There IS a mag safety.

I am confident the barrel is original, as it bears identical proof marks and serial number as the slide and frame, including the Nitro Proofmarks, and the ELG inside of a circle and crown indicated as the black powder proof. Items 13 and 19 on this guys list. http://gerardcox.########.com/2014/06/deciphering-belgian-proof-marks.html

As for the cam lug, according to the pictures and descriptions of cam lugs shown in this article, I have the squared off cam lug.

I am not sure I agree with your assessment regarding rounded vs squared indicating pre-war production, because the above article suggests both styles were available pre-war.

Taken together, seems like I have a barely pre-war production pistol.
 
First off, I am not up on the hi power, other than the 500.oo is too low.
Blue Book shows that serial number range , 1940, 11-15000 where all shipped to the Finnish
Blue book pricing , you have to take with a grain of salt in Canada, But for Finnish, SÁ marked??? if that is what it is , would be 1200- 1500.oo in70% condition 800.oo in poor condition
 
marshall said:
First off, I am not up on the hi power, other than the 500.oo is too low.
Blue Book shows that serial number range , 1940, 11-15000 where all shipped to the Finnish
Blue book pricing , you have to take with a grain of salt in Canada, But for Finnish, SÁ marked??? if that is what it is , would be 1200- 1500.oo in70% condition 800.oo in poor condition
Click to expand...

My serial number is in the 22,000-23,000 range.
 
Wow, wow, slow down gentlemen.
- tangent sights are not for precision shooting, the reason many early XX-century handguns have them is cavalry. Traditionally one of the purposes of handgun in the army is to arm the cavalry men. Their task is not to shoot precisely from the galloping horse, but to disturb and disrupt from the safe distance and thus you NEED tangent sights.
- OP handgun is pre-war, I don't recall post-war Belgium contract, however post-war handguns and markings were different anyway.
- bakelite grips on pre-war Belgium military contract would be a replacement
- @CameronSS - let's see pictures of your BHP, maybe we can help to identify it better.
- serial range of Finnish contract is not consecutive and the whole situation with BHP serials is a mess, for some contract handguns were pulled from general inventory, for others they had dedicated ranges. Some had both pulled and numbered. Bottom line - in most case serial by itself is useless and only makes sense with combination of other features
- commercial pre-war fixed sights handguns do exist
- I would not trust info from BlueBook on both handgun information and price, prices are relevant to US and info is too generic and often is not accurate when it comes to advanced topics.
 
As I said, Hi powers are not my thing, never collected or dealt them much, in the last 20 yrs.
I just posted what I see in the Blue book
BTW , I handled a new in the white HP inglis "A" that a advanced collector had, before he passed away.
A brain fart happened , I bought some neat 12-6, passed on that. We do stupid #### at times.
 
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