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Apologies for bringing this BTT, but in my quest to find an affordable Ballester Molina to add to the "Argentine Sidearms" collection, I ended up buying another one of these Sistema things!

Well, sorta...!

Just picked it up yesterday, and spent some time on it this arvo. Very interesting piece!

It was advertised as a Commercial Hartford Colt 1911 from the first shipment to Argentina in April 1914.

Well, sorta...!

Turns out the serial number marked on the action (frame) is indeed from the April 1914 shipment of 100 pistols delivered to the Argentine battleship Rivadavia, under construction and about to be commissioned in the US at the time. A second 100 pistols was delivered on the same day to another Argentine warship, the Moreno, being built there also.

The action is however a Sistema Colt built decades later at Buenos Aires or Rosario, with the original number removed before being rebadged with the 1914 Colt number.
So its a fake, right?

Well, sorta...!

Thankfully the slide is original Colt with the un-circled Rampant Colt to the rear of the slide-grips and MARINA ARGENTINA roll-marked on the RHS. The patent information on the LHS of the slide includes the Aug 19, 1913 patent date however, added some time around mid-1914, so correct for one of the 127 pistols delivered in November 1914. Only 327 Hartford Colts made up the total Argentine contracts of 1914, the deliveries in subsequent years having the Argentine crest on the slide.

So what I actually have is a post-1927 Sistema Colt with a November 1914 commercial Hartford Colt slide and an April 1914 serial number! A real bitzer!

But here's the good bit:
apart from significant but gentle wear to the finish on the slide, this thing has done no work whatsoever and is in bloody marvelous condition for a (partly) 106-year-old .45 Colt! The bore condition is near new and I was assuming it had been re-barreled since repatriation from Argentina, but on (very!) close examination I found a microscopic US importer's mark on the barrel: NHM CO SAC CA for New Helvetia Mercantile Corp, meaning the whole shebang almost certainly left Argentina as-is. No clue how it ended up on the western side of the pond though!

Really enjoying my Argentine Colt adventures so far,
...with Ballester Molina still to come!

Will post some photos of this latest acquisition when I get a bit more time at the desktop.

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Marrakai
When the bull drops, the bullshit stops!
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www.marrakai-adventure.com.au

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