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Real or early Photoshop:
![Air gun Trigger Gun barrel Revolver Gun accessory]()
My Tokarev mystery
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Hello. Please note: Fake. The observation by 81turbota is spot on and I'll add that the slide serrations are 1947 style. Tula was no longer producing the TT33 by then. Check out Cameron Whites Tokarev book for details. Cheers, ABTOMAT
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One thing I noticed that looked a bit fishy is that the inscription, in Russian, reads "...from the workers of the Tula factory." Note that the proper name should be "Tula Weapons Factory" and the missing word is "oruzheinogo" in transcription. Why it was not included in the engraving may be simply because of the lack of space, but who knows. Everybody knows of the huge Tula weapons production complex.
This reminds me of a faked samovar I saw in Germany in the 1980's. I was in the US Army at that time and a colleague came back from a vacation in Turkey with an "antique" Russian samovar. Examining the various stamped markings, which typically denote the various prizes the maker has won for his products, I saw numerous spelling errors. So the samovar was either a complete fake, or an old worn samovar that had its markings enhanced by someone with only rudimentary knowledge of Russian. On another occasion I saw a faked Russian icon, also with spelling errors, although in Old Church Slavonic. The kicker was that on the back side of the icon were glued sheets of old Russian newspapers printed with the post revolution orthography. By then it was well known that Gulag prisoners were making these fake antique icons.
Regarding the OP's original photo, even if it is a fake, it would still be valuable simply because so much skill and effort went into it. Oddly, there is a lucrative market for certain faked renaissance paintings, particularly by a certain German painter, and this is because of the amount of skill invested ino making a fake.
This reminds me of a faked samovar I saw in Germany in the 1980's. I was in the US Army at that time and a colleague came back from a vacation in Turkey with an "antique" Russian samovar. Examining the various stamped markings, which typically denote the various prizes the maker has won for his products, I saw numerous spelling errors. So the samovar was either a complete fake, or an old worn samovar that had its markings enhanced by someone with only rudimentary knowledge of Russian. On another occasion I saw a faked Russian icon, also with spelling errors, although in Old Church Slavonic. The kicker was that on the back side of the icon were glued sheets of old Russian newspapers printed with the post revolution orthography. By then it was well known that Gulag prisoners were making these fake antique icons.
Regarding the OP's original photo, even if it is a fake, it would still be valuable simply because so much skill and effort went into it. Oddly, there is a lucrative market for certain faked renaissance paintings, particularly by a certain German painter, and this is because of the amount of skill invested ino making a fake.
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Stalin was gifted (by workers of TOZ) a nickeled TK Korovin SN A51799, this TT was probably gifted to Stalin by workers of some chinese computer factory (a few years ago
))Hi. Thanks for sharing this photo. While anything is possible, I never came across anything like this when researching my book on Tokarev pistols. The idea of shrinking down a design goes way back and makes me think of the "baby Luger" of which only a very few were made.
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Going OT, but still sort of relevant: read the short story "Levsha" - "Lefty" - by the 19th Century Russian writer Nikolai Leskov. Briefly, Tsar Nicholas I commissions the skilled gunsmiths at the Tula arsenal to one-up the British, who presented his father with a microscopic mechanical flea. The Tula gunsmiths take the microscopic mechanical flea and attach horseshoes to its feet. The result of course, is that with the added weight the mechanical flea no longer moves.
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LOL! Clearly it's a fake. Beria's "obrez" TT33 would have been inscribed "the younger, the better." Beria liked to cruise around Moscow, picking up (i.e. abducting) young girls and raping them.
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Well that clears things up a lot ...my other chopped TT33 is chromed with that exact inscription ! I have both of Beria's pistols. Let me go check and be back after I confirm serial numbers, they may be a matching pair !
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