La Lira: A Spanish Copy of the Mannlicher 1901
Forgotten Weapons
•
11m
The Spanish firm of Garate Anitua y Cia manufactured this copy of the Mannlicher 1901/1905 pistol for just a brief period around 1910. It is not a straight copy, as the Mannlicher was chambered for its own 7.63mm Mannlicher cartridge and fed using stripper clips and a fixed internal magazine while the La Lira design was chambered for the more common .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning) and used a typical type of detachable magazine. In addition, the La Lira was a simple blowback action, not including the slight delaying mechanism built into the original Mannlicher.
In addition to two standard La Lira pistols, we also have one gold damascened example to take a look at. These are quite rare today - no documented production records are known, but it is estimated that only 500-1000 were made total.
Up Next in Forgotten Weapons
-
South African Kommando: The "Rhuzi"
The Kommando was a semiauto SMG-type carbine designed by Alex du Plessis in Salisbury Rhodesia in the late 1970s. It was manufactured by a company called Lacoste Engineering, and financed by a man named Hubert Ponter - and those initials were the name of the initial production version of the gun;...
-
Hungarian KGPF-9: Kalashnikov Genetic...
This modern Hungarian submachine gun bears a remarkable similarity to the AKM rifle in many aspects, from the pistol grip to many of the manufacturing practices. In fact, the more we did into the gun, the more Kalashnikov influence we can see in it. This particular example is semiautomatic only, ...
-
Final Prices: James D Julia Spring 20...
As usual, I have a recap today of the final prices of the guns I filmed from the most recent Julia auction (spring of 2018). Once again, I focussed on machine guns, as well as high end sporting arms and Civil War rifles.
This was the last auction being held in Maine by James Julia, as the comp...
