Yard sale find W W Greener Flare Pistol

[junkman]

I was out to puruse the Saturday morning yard sales and found a W.W. Greener, Birmingham flare pistol. It measures 8 inches in length and has a brass frame. It is marked /l\ '15 so I'm assuming itis WW 1 British. The bore is 1 inch in diameter. It seems to be in working order, and just a little dirty. I've included picturs of the marks. Are these fairly common? What would it be worth? I couldn't find out much about it on line.

 

[sunray]

The stuff that turns up in odd places amazes me. Apparently it's an early model. There was a muzzle extension added later because users were getting burned with the short barrel. Webley & Scott made the same model(signal pistol No 1 Mk3).
Haven't a clue about value or how common they are. Kind of a specialized area of collecting.

 

[smellie]

An original Very pistol, World War One.
One of my favourite Great War cartoons is a view (by Bruce Bairnsfather, of course) of two guys in the attic of a wrecked house. the young one, just come up to the front, is watching the evening flares and asks, "Two reds and a green; what does that mean?"
And the old sweat, still hung-over from leave, replies, "Two cherry brandies and a creme de menthe!"

That to one side, there was a huge section on pyrotechnics, including flares for this critter, in the TEXT BOOK OF SERVICE EXPLOSIVES - 1938.

Sure wish I owned it; only way I would ever be able to afford ANYTHING Greener!