Just got a call from Turnbull Restorations. My 1943 Colt M1911 comes home next week after ten months in New York being returned to the condition in which it left the factory during World War II.
Here's what it looked like when I last saw it in July of last year:
It looked nice already. Curious to see the difference.
The nickel plating will be gone, replaced by a gray-black phosphate finish that is oil-absorptive. It won't be shiny, but it will be authentic.
Nickel plating was applied to many of the 1911s that went AWOL in the decades after WWII. It covered up pitting, rust damage, and the damage inflicted by carelessly removing the rust, and prevented further corrosion. But it also destroyed any collector value, and was usually done on the cheap to turn a fast buck. Over time, poorly applied plating fractures and begins to flake away. You can't see it in the picture, but the plating on mine had begun to deteriorate.
Doug Turnbull took up refinishing guns out of his father's gun store in the 1980s, and was so good at it that he quickly made enough money that he could afford to buy up the equipment used by factories to manufacture M1911s under government contract. The equipment had been mothballed since the end of WWII, but many makers had held on to it anticipating the government might order more - but they never did. When the Beretta 92F was adopted by the military to replace the 1911, Colt and other makers started unloading the equipment, and Doug Turnbull was prescient enough to buy all of it he could get his hands on, as well as the paperwork documenting finishing recipes and techniques. So Turnbull has a unique ability to restore 1911s using the equipment upon which most of them were originally built.
Shiny 1911s look great, but can be easily and inexpensively had nowadays without defiling relics of WWII.
Had mine had its original finish, even in poor condition it would have been worth over a grand, and in good to very good condition would be worth $5-$8k, and increasing in value because the frame and slide serial numbers match. Plated as it was, it delighted the seller to get $500 from me when I purchased it. It cost $2900 total for it to be restored. It will never be ethically worth what an unmolested example will be worth, but it is likely worth what I now have in it, and by the time I kick off and my sons are fighting over it, it will probably be worth more.
But that's not really the point. It's a piece of history, built to fight in the most devastating war in the history of humanity, and only God knows what stories it might tell could it speak.
I found a Boyt M1936 holster also made in 1943 for it. And I had a friend who is a holster maker build a custom rig for it as well.
