Italian police trade in M51

[ruber]

Seems like folks here like old police guns as well as single action 9mm’s, so I thought I’d share my other favorite single action 9mm. A bunch of these hit the US a couple years ago and really seemed to hit the marketplace in Spring and Summer 2020. I really kept on my LGS about them, so they called me when they showed up. I picked up two from them: the nicest they had and the ugliest they had thinking I’d refinish one. Both were from 1961 and I was able to get some good photos of markings for reference pages.







The ugly one turned out to be in great shape internally, just really beat up on the outside. After cleaning and lube, the trigger turned out not so bad either. Short and clean, but heavy, right at 5.5 lb. Only holds 9 rounds, but very comfortable and really fun to shoot, as accurate as any of the 92’s I’ve shot. The grips were really beat, so I added a set from KSD and am tempted to leave the metal as is.




Here is an article from Armi e Tiro with translate:
www-armietiro-it.translate.goog/le-Beretta-51-ex-polizia-12920?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=nui

[CXM]

Nice 951s.

Yours is pretty nice... the ones I bought that had come from Israel surplus was nasty... I mean REALLY nasty...

Here is a photo of the better of the two I bought.





The other is worse... if you can imagine that ...

I also had a Helwan Made-in-Egypt coy of the 951... new out of the box it was about as nasty as my old ones.

Magazines were hard to find... after finally finding a few, the 951s went to auction with the bulk of my collection.

FWIW

Chuck