As we’ve discussed many previous times in this blog, it seems that there is no end to the number of rabbit holes one can fall into when collecting Glocks and Glock memorabilia. One such field of collecting involves early Glock-made rear sight tools. This is an area where I am woefully under-educated. I would assume that there is some kind of tool that was made for sight installation at the factory, but I have not seen what tool they used. Even after initial production was complete, there had to be tools readily available to change between fixed and rear sights as we know the company swapped a ..read more

 Over in the rare Glock section of the website, there is a post about the rainbow of Glock colors. While the company makes at least seven factory frame colors: Black, Gray, Battlefield Green, OD Green, Flat Dark Earth, Red, and Blue, the last two are much harder for the average person to get their hands on.  The red and blue frames are reserved for training guns and Glock’s company policy has always been to only allow sales to official law enforcement or other government agencies. No explanation has ever been provided for why the average citizen is prohibited from training with a firearm, but ..read more

With the passing of Gaston Glock earlier this week, I’ve been reflecting on his remarkable level of achievement and the unprecedented success of his company. A self-made man who did not produce a firearm until the age of 52, Mr. Glock never retired from his company and personally oversaw it’s growth into one of the largest handgun manufacturers in the world. Finances have always been kept secret as it is not a publicly traded company, but I can only imagine how many billions the man must have been worth. So that level of success got me to thinking about whether he ever experienced failure: Th ..read more

Sometimes, as collectors, we get to a point where we take for granted that information that has been out for a while is common knowledge. There is a great collector forum over at glocktalk.com where rare variants get discussed on the regular. The above picture is an example of a Glock factory made cutaway model which have been well documented and discussed on the forum, but are not necessarily a commonly known variant. My first cutaway–purchased years ago–was a second generation model 19 that I scored at an auction for $500 plus shipping. I knew very little about them at the time, but knew en ..read more

I was recently participating in a thread over on Glocktalk discussing which models would make a good investment. I think the rise of Glock collecting is still in it’s infancy and over time it will provide substantial returns to those who are selectively purchasing. As of now, I see a lot of potential in early and rare Gen 2 models that are still being sold in the sub-$1000 price point as of now. As this hobby catches on, all models that are out of production will have increasing value. Though I believe it will always be true that the earlier the gun, the more value it will have, that does not ..read more

Back in my college days, Goldeneye was the number one game on the Nintendo 64. I can clearly remember late night, redbull-fueled, killer tournaments, and the fact that I was never the last man standing. One of my best friends played enough to memorize the maps and the respawn patterns of each so once he killed you the first time, he would meet you at your new place of generation to kill you over and over until the game ended… maybe it was fun for him but we all kinda just thought he was a jerk. Usually, you would be dead before picking up a new weapon, but your one hope for success was to esc ..read more

A friend of mine recently posted some scans of an article written to review the “new” Glock 19s from the 1989 Annual issued by American Handgunner. Beyond just being cool because it’s one of the earliest articles written about model 19s, I found one detail that was especially compelling: the picture above is of the gun reviewed and the closeup (below) shows the serial number as “BM909.” ​ Prior to seeing this article, it was generally accepted that the earliest prefix 19s were from the BP serial bank except for the few AN bank Gen 1 prototypes. Of further interest, the date codes stamped on ..read more

This afternoon I had the pleasure of touring the National Rifle Association National Sporting Arms Museum in Springfield, MO. (Yes, that’s the actual name though all signage and most references to it will abbreviate to “NRA” and, thus, avoid the redundant “nationals”). Most people who hear “NRA Museum” will think of the NRA Firearms Museum located in Fairfax, VA.–that location is their largest of three both by square footage and number of items on display. The sporting arms museum is built into a wing at the “Granddaddy of all Bass Pro Shops.” Ironically, the granddaddy is only the second lar ..read more

I intentionally left off mentioning the “Glock Annual” publication from my last post about “Glock Autopistols” so that I could create another post to highlight this publication as well. The two magazines are identical from a content perspective and only differ in their covers, but have run in parallel since 1995. I have not ever discovered the rationale behind running the two different covers/names so if anyone knows the backstory, I would love to hear from you. Another interesting facet, at least when it comes to collectibles, is that the Glock Autopistols version seems to bring more money f ..read more

The inaugural issue of “Glock Autopistols” circa 1995 In an effort to deepen my knowledge of Glock variants with the intent of writing a true collector’s book, I began a small collection of Glock print material including back issues of Glock Autopistols magazine. GA mag was (possibly still is) printed by Harris Publications and has been a mainstay of Glock’s yearly promotional literature since 1995. Each issue reads like any gun rag, but consists only of articles pertaining to Glock firearms and their users. What is truly amazing is that they are able to write new versions of these same storie ..read more