1987 Walther TPH .22 Pistol

[1srelluc]

My LGS called and said that the "coin shop guy" came by and dropped off a bunch of guns to put on consignment so I went over to see what they were.

Most were shotguns and a couple decent Winchester lever-actions (one was a fairly nice Win. Model 64) but what really caught my eye was a little stainless Walther TPH .22 pistol.

Looks to have been made in 1987 - '88 timeframe. There are no charts on them, only a data base from folks who got them with the dated target in the box.....I did not get anything but the pistol.

6+1 capacity.

Here it is up against a Walther PPK of the same era.

This one sorta rounds out my stainless Interarms Walther collection......I gave $400.00 for it which seems like a lot but they go for $600+ and I haven't seen one for years out in the wild.

 

[odanny]

Wonder if they still make anything in Alexandria, Virgina.

 

[1srelluc]

Wonder if thety still make anything in Alexandria, Virgina.

Nah, Interarms went out of business in 1999 after Sam Cummings passed and his daughter was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1998, after shooting her boyfriend Roberto Villegas.

Interarms never actually made anything, they were a importer and held the manufacturing licencing for Walther products made in the USA.....Interarms Walthers are GTG.....S&W, not so much.

The founder was a real interesting guy.....It was a wink-wink type of thing for decades that Interarms was also a CIA front.

Samuel Cummings - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I know folks that used to work there and they would offload crates of arms from a ship in the middle of the night and load them onto waiting .gov tagged trucks.

 

[odanny]

The founder was a real interesting guy.....It was a wink-wink type of thing for decades that Interarms was also a CIA front.

Reading his bio, it probably was.

 

[1srelluc]

Reading his bio, it probably was.

Here's a more detailed article on Sam Cummings and Interarms.

https://unblinkingeye.com/Guns/Interarms/interarms.html

There was a DC-based arms dealer (I don't recall the name) where Sam moved a shit-ton of arms through but it burned during the '68 riots. Before it burned they opened it up and the DC Police armed themselves with M1 carbines and such.

 

[odanny]

Due to the location alone it would have been the likely spot for CIA involvement, but they also recruited Cummings as a weapons expert, so you can probably infer something was going on.

 

[1srelluc]

Due to the location alone it would have been the likely spot for CIA involvement, but they also recruited Cummings as a weapons expert, so you can probably infer something was going on.

I bet he spawned a baker's dozen gun shops/importers through his former employees. Most are dead now but all that I knew of had .gov connections and were class III dealers.

One in my town always had FBI agents in picking-up stuff they had shipped in to his shop.

 

[odanny]

I bet he spawned a baker's dozen gun shops/importers through his former employees. Most are dead now but all that I knew of had .gov connections and were class III dealers.

One in my town always had FBI agents in picking-up stuff they had shipped in to his shop.

Imagine business during Iran-Contra, it was booming.

Iran–Contra affair - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[westwall]

I bet he spawned a baker's dozen gun shops/importers through his former employees. Most are dead now but all that I knew of had .gov connections and were class III dealers.

One in my town always had FBI agents in picking-up stuff they had shipped in to his shop.

Nah, just a couple went off on their own. The most famous being "Dangerous Dave Cumberland" who was a Class X dealer in California.

He later set up "The Old Western Scrounger" and was a fixture in the supply of rare ammunition.

He was a good friend of mine, who sadly passed away a few years ago. I bought his library when he developed Parkinsons and could no longer read.

His memory was astonishing.