Nazi Forest Ranger Flawless RZM Walther PPK Pistol
Continuing our Coronavirus Specials
Hey guys welcome to another walk-in Wednesday. This mask with the little bunny rabbit on it, is to remind you that we're doing Coronavirus specials which means low production value. I'm just sitting in front of a camera, shooting this by myself, no one else around. I usually work with a team of people and I look forward to getting back to those days because they're able to bring in a lot of outside research and movie clips and scenes from the day, World War II, battle scenes all that stuff is important. But it's either I don't do any content or I do it this way. I think you still enjoy it because I'm going to show you something really cool today, a boxed RZM with a little bit of a story. So let's jump right in.
Check out these dehumidifiers
But before I do, not only do we have Coronavirus but we have humidity in my safe. That's right! Some of you have probably seen the commercial I did and I bought this product and we do offer this. This is the large size, this is the small size. You see the orange, that's the little beads in there, you open this up, put it in your safe. So I hung one in my safe about two weeks ago. They said it takes about a month before the orange will turn green. It's actually a green color, it's an ugly green, dirty green. But it turned green within about two weeks that means I had a lot of humidity in my safe.
Even though this is April which is a very dry time of year and I have a dehumidifier on, I still had lots of humidity. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to plug it in, take this, I plug it in overnight, it dries it out, it turns orange again and I put it back in the safe tomorrow morning. So I just wanted to tell you about that, at the end of this video I'll have a little commercial about how you can buy one of these but this is fantastic for your safe or your closet that has humidity. It keeps your guns and all your collectables nice and dry. But enough of that, let's talk about World War II guns.
Here is a special boxed gun
Okay, here's what walked in the door yesterday. So this becomes a walk-in Wednesday. This is a boxed Walther PPK. Don't walk away yet because this one's special. You'll say oh I've already seen a Walther PPK. Usually, when we show you a boxed gun it has a green label that wraps around and has a printed serial number that matches the gun. Those ones sell for a little bit more than these, I've mentioned this before, this is an earlier model. So from the beginning, they started making them in about 1929 up to about 1935, they used either a bowtie label or this round label that was hand-numbered.
It’s hand numbered!
This one is hand-numbered in pencil. It's very hard to read but you'll trust me that this is marked in pencil and it matches the gun inside. They also did them in black ink. Let me show you one of those. This one is marked in black ink, not much of it left. It should be done in a Germanic style, which this is, by the way, they're ones the early Germanic was their ones look like sevens, they have a flag on them.
But all that is to say the black ink or the pencil marked, black ink you can't really erase, so those are would be hard to fake. The green labels are hard to fake because I've talked to people who have tried to replicate it and they can't replicate the font, it's an old font. I'm sure it can be done, anything can be done. But I haven't seen people who have been able to fake them. But obviously, when you have one that is numbered in pencil it's not that hard to change the number. For me having looked at this, I don't see any signs of alteration. It was done very lightly, there's no sign of the removal and it is done in a Germanic style. So I believe this box is original to this gun.
A little more Info
Now we have a little bit of information about here which I'm going to share with you but let's take a look at this. This is going to bring tears to your eyes when you see this. Oh, the inside of the box has some writing, we'll talk about that, it's pink. If you've watched these videos before, the early ones had a pink interior and then later they went to a yellow interior, has an original cleaning rod. This is the early manual by the way, early manual, this is from 1935, '36. Later it had a slightly different manual. The more common manual looks like this and then this is an earlier manual which would go with this gun which was actually made in about 1935.
Get Ready for A Brand New RZM PPK
It is an RZM. So here we have brand new in the box RZM PPK. This is the part that just brings tears to my eyes. Look at this thing, absolutely gorgeous. The fire blue on the safety is almost 100% there, no muzzle wear at all. If you can see the serial number, this one is in the 842,000 range which is right at the end of the RZM run. Again, 30,000 of them, a solid block of RZM's. Now when we look inside the box again it has the separator, fully intact.
It has a spare magazine, you already saw the cleaning rod and the manual and then it also has this cleaning tin, let's show that to you - cleaning tin with what I call the milk-can. This is the early milk can oiler and then a cleaning rag with the picture of the factory on the tin. One other thing in here, you do see, those are dummy rounds. I guess it's for just checking the functioning of the gun, you can put in dummy rounds. Let me show you one. This is actually one of the factory dummy rounds, they have holes in them. That shows that there's no powder in it. So that's the Walther PPK made in about 1935.
What’s RZM?
Now let's take a look at who this was issued to. But let me back up a minute because I've done several videos on the RZM (Reichszeugmeisterei) variation. Again the RZM marking was the abbreviation or logo for the Nazi Party purchasing department. There's the long name which I don't want to pronounce because my German is so terrible, but that's a purchasing department for the party.
A slight correction to an earlier video
And I've made several videos where I say the first variation of party leader is the RZM. Since that time, and that was about 6-9 months ago I made several references to the RZM being a party leader variation, but since that time in talking with other collectors and doing a little more research and especially from the video from the RZM that we know was issued to a school teacher and then this RZM that was issued to somebody who worked for the Forestry Service, I changed the phrasing from party leader to party member. So that's a correction since this video was done six months ago.
They weren’t really Party Leaders
So I want to show you a portion of that video where an RZM we know was issued to a school teacher but every time I say the word party leader, which I say a lot, just substitute the phrase party member. Because in fact they weren't really leaders. If you think about the fact that 30,000 of them were made in 1934 and 1935, there weren't 30,000 leaders in the country but there was well more than 30,000 members. So as a member they had the right to purchase the gun at a discount. So let's watch that video that I did about six or eight months ago which the guy who sold it to me didn't really do any research on but this is the name of the party leader who it was issued to.
Karl Wiendenhoft received this gun
Because you can see in Germanic writing the serial number of the gun. You see the serial number there and you see the serial number on the gun and they match. And I can tell from the writing that was most likely not faked and his name is Karl Wiedenhoft. How was that? How was my German? Maybe a German friend can help me out, Wiedernhoft. So Karl, the fantasy I have about party leaders is all they were like, you know they're strutting around town in their party leader uniform with their brocade belt on and this guy must have been a really cool dude. I'd love to find out a little bit more about them.
But the reason I'm showing you video is because in this case it's not true. We actually found records on Karl and it turns out he was a school teacher. And they have the town here, my German is not good. I'm not even going to say that name of the town but the name of the town is there and it ends in Celle. That doesn't sound German, Celle, but that's the name of the town, small town. So he's a small-town school teacher, we have records. This is his professional certificate as a teacher and this was issued in '23, so 10 years later. He was an older school teacher; he became a party leader. We actually have information about his party leader affiliation, here's the certificate. In 1933, looks like he became a party leader in 1933, it has his party leader number and in '34 he went down to his local party leader store and bought the gun.
Wow! The only the 2nd one we’ve been able to Track
Now this is the second one this year that we've been able to track down. When I got this, it has again very faint but on the lid, I can see some writing here. This is the guy's name. The only thing I can read, that top line is Stief which I assume is his name because it's also right here. Stief is the man's name and the writing which is printed, those of you are German hopefully can verify but it says Forestry Officer and the town is Warmensteinach.
So I know my German pronunciation is bad, some of you Germans will happily correct me but Warmensteinach, I looked it up on the map, it's in the Bavarian area and Forestry Officer would make sense because it's a very rural area. It's actually a ski resort in the winter and then it's got a lot of forest area. And so again, he had to join the party probably to get his job with the government. It's a government job and he's a Forestry Ranger hanging out in a ski resort. So again not the typical what you would think of as a party leader but certainly, he joined the party, he got his membership card, he paid his dues and he was able to buy an RZM PPK new in the box. He must not have taken it to work with him because the way this looks it had to have sat in a drawer or in a closet and hardly ever used.
Again if I'd look at that gun I would be insulting it to say it's 99%; it's like 99.9%. So the bore is absolutely perfect. It's dated inside and you can see September 7th of '36. They put the month in the middle. But it was 1936 which actually would coincide with the date this was manufactured in '35. He bought it in '36 and probably kept it and didn't use it for a very long time. Also then you can see the actual serial number of the gun is there and the serial number of the gun is right there as well. But as I mentioned you probably can't even see that.
How much will this run me?
So one of the only other questions that I get asked a lot is well how much does something like this cost? This particular gun, I'm not going to sell. I've not seen a better Walther PPK RZM variation and to have one like this, it's brand-new in the box. This is one I will keep for my personal collection but just to give you a ballpark, a nice Walther PPK will sell for about $1,500. A brand-new in this original box, very hard to find because the first thing people did is throw away the box and take the gun and put it in a holster and carry it with them.
So it's hard to find them in the box but a box gun I sell around $4,500 - $5,000. Because this is an RZM in the box it's probably more like $5,000 or $6,000. The fact that it is hand-numbered hurts it a little bit but it actually should be hand-numbered because they didn't start doing the green labels until about '36, '37. So that's just a general overview probably more than what most of you would want to spend but that's why I'm bringing it to you so while you're stuck inside, socially isolating it gives you something to look at and really enjoy.
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Oh my gosh it's brutal outside! If you live in the eastern United States this is what it's like June, July and August. Now just imagine, you're a collectable firearm in somebody's safe, in their bedroom drawer, in their man cave or in their closet. This is how your guns feel. And that's why Legacy Collectibles has decided to add this new product to our website. If you go to our website, in the accessories you will see that we've added a YouTube store. The idea here is we want to have products like this. We'll be adding more products later but the first product we wanted to add to our YouTube store was the dehumidifier.
The Eva-Dry Dehumidifier is our newest addition
Because I'm excited about this, it's not a new invention but it's certainly new to me. I've always had a dehumidifier in my basement, also we have several safes in the basement. And the problem is the dehumidifier is running non-stop, we really keep an eye on that, really does a good job in the basement but when I open up my safe it's still a little muggy in there. In fact, from time to time some of my holsters get a little mouldy. And then I discovered this product, love it! It's called Eva-dry, let me get it right side up, called Eva-dry. You just hang it in your safe and this orange, as it begins to absorb the humidity in any small space really it turns green. Their estimate, depending on the humidity this will last for about a month and then you just pull out this handy plug, plug it in overnight, it dries it out and you put it back in your safe. I haven't tried this for 10 years but I'm told this will last up to 10 years which is very economical for a $30 investment.
You not only protect your investments but also you support our Channel. That's right, we don't take any paid advertising and we've been doing this for about a year. Really have no way to support the channel other than your support. So go to our YouTube store and check out some of our products. I highly recommend these dehumidifiers. It comes in two sizes; this is for a larger safe, this is for a smaller area. And also if you're like me, I have air conditioning in my home but in my closet where I keep my clothes and stuff it sometimes gets a little musty in there. This is great for any small space and there's no need to plug it in. You don't need the electrical outlet until you get to the place where you have to dry it out. Check it out on our website and thank you for supporting our Channel.