4 Ways to Tell if your Nazi Party Leader Walther PPK is Real or Fake
Hey, guys, welcome to another quickie. I got something in yesterday and I just really want to quickly show it to you. But that is not a spider crawling on my chest. That's to help us with our quality of sound. We'll see how it works out. Thanks to the power of the YouTube channel. We've been getting a lot of customers or collectors who have been coming to us to authenticate their guns. Yesterday was a good example of somebody who said I bought a party leader. He was convinced that it was 100 percent correct, bought it some years ago and send it to us to authenticate. Unfortunately, I knew immediately within three seconds that it was reproduction.
Send them into us to Authenticate
Let me tell you four ways that you can tell if a party leader is real or fake. Actually, the best way is having us evaluate it, feel free to contact us at legacy collectables dot com and we'd be happy to evaluate your prized possessions. I specialize in Walthers and Lugers. We'd be happy to help you out.
4 Ways to Tell if a Party Leader is Real or Fake
But here's how you can tell. So this is the PPK that he sent me. Now there's some things about this that are very good. It's actually a quality fake, but a fake nonetheless. And here's one that is from my collection.
Before anything Look at the Serial Number
Right away when I look at the serial number and it is in the proper range. This is 2 4 2. Two hundred and forty-two thousand, which is in 1938.
It should be in the 1938 range. This is 2 4 6 2. I see the serial number that doesn't have anything to do with the graph, but it is on a proper error gun.
#1 Look at the Color and Look of the Grip
But right away I look at the color. So step number one is the color or the look of the grip. The first fake party leaders I saw looked more like this. They say how dull that color is. But then they got a little smarter and somebody took the dull grip. And you can see if you look at here, you can see the it's been sprayed with shellac. So somebody put a coat of shellac to make it shinier again. The goal was to make it look like this.
And they did a pretty good job of making it look like that. But it sprayed on shellac. And so again, so you want to look at that. Now, imagine when they first sprayed it. It was it looked a lot better.
#2 The Feel
The second is the feel this dull one. This is what it was like right off of the press. And when I rub it, I'll do that. My new mike, it looks like a spider.
I feel sandpaper. It's very there's sharp edges. The diamonds are sharp, and by the way, I checked out a black widow grip that goes on the Luger, a fake one has the same feel. It had real sharp diamonds. This one, unfortunately, the person who improved this one by spraying it when I rub this one is smooth. And that's probably because the shellac rounded off the edges. So that was actually a smooth move, making it smooth.
But this one has a feel. So first is the look of the grip. Second is the feel. The grip.
#3 Does it have a Metal Insert?
The third. I'm going to take this. Take this off just to show you the third way that you can tell. OK, so a third way, I had to take a pause and pull the grips off, which you have to be very careful pulling off these crack very easily. They should be made of very brittle bakelite and they crack very easily.
The reproductions sometimes are they're good enough to make them with a bakelite, but most of them are a softer plastic. So let's take a look on the inside. You've probably heard that all PPK grips, they had problems with cracking. So they put an aluminum insert or a metal insert. You can see it. And if I looked at all of these grips that I have here, every one of them has a metal insert. Sometimes they're a little buried in there.
You can see where the plastic mould is actually partially covering the insert. But on the wall caused this shellacked fake grip. There is no metal insert.
Be Careful!
So that's a third way you can tell. Now that's not an end all be all because again, the fakers, they must watch YouTube videos because they now have this grip with the insert. Let me show you. Remember the dull one? And look at the insert. They did it. Basically what I think they did, they took a real grip that was cracked or damaged in some way and salvaged the insert and then put it into the mold. So you have to be careful. They're getting better and unfortunately, they're going to watch this and improve it even more. We did color, feel, and the metal insert.
#4 The Weight
And finally, the weight. Let's take my scale here.
Real Party Leader
I'm going to put a real Party Leader on there. 1.25 is a real one. And by the way, if I take any one of these grips and I throw them on here, that one has a screw in it. So it's 1.3. You’ll see the screws on there. That's a difference in weight. But they all they run anywhere from one point to one point three, somewhere in that range.
Fake Party Leader
Now if I put the Mr. Shellac on it, he is 1.6. So it's heavier. The reason it's heavier and this is really hard to tell on the video, but what I can see is the it's a little thicker. It's a little thicker. You can see it on the top and on the panels. The fake one is a little thicker. And when I look at this one with the metal insert, it's even more so I can see the thickness of the panel top and the sides.
Call us before you Spend Several Thousand on a Party Leader Gun
So that's just a real quick overview. Again, if you're not an expert on this, you shouldn't be spending nine ten thousand dollars on a party leader unless you know for sure it's real. When we sell these, you will see that every grip is slightly different. These are like fingerprints.
We at Legacy give a Lifetime Guarantee
And so when we sell one, we give a lifetime guarantee that it's all original. And the way we do that is we just save a picture. We give you a picture of close ups and like a fingerprint, you can easily identify that this is the one I sold you 10 years ago. And if it turns out it's a fake, we give you your money back. So you want to go with a reputable dealer who's going to give you a money back guarantee because you're talking about the difference between $200 and $10,000.
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