Picked up a nice High Standard Supermatic Citation with West German proofs last week. Once I got it cleaned up it looks like it has been shot very little. The West German proof sure make me wonder what it was doing there and why was it reimported here? Also marked TGI KNOX TN, the importer I assume.
Most imports like this come from some organization like a police department. I have not found anything on it to indicate anything like that. Any ideas?
I don’t find this particularly unusual. There is a significant market for .22 target firearms in Germany (and West Germany before that), and I was able to find some pistols of the type with the same proofs for sale on German sales platforms pretty quickly; so they were exported in numbers.
As for why it came back, there are international dealers who will roam regional markets for good deals on used guns and then export/import them wherever it seems most profitable, so with the importer marking on your gun, that’s likely what happened.
The DSB, Deutscher Schützenbund, has over 1.6 Million members alone, add the BDS, DJV, BDMP and you have over 2 million out of roughly 80 million people that are eligible to buy a firearm. Since every club has a structure that includes coaches, you will on average find considerably higher levels of marksmanship than in the U.S.
Germans are organized in shooting clubs since centuries and their gun clubs are considered an immaterial world heritage by the UNESCO. Annual membership costs are very low and even the smallest town has a gun range.
West German proofed HS Citation
Linear Mode
