I finally had an opportunity to go get the pistol from the FFL. I will take pics this evening. It is a 1933 yr model and has had a gagillion rounds of ammo fired through it. The barrel is about half a box of ammo away from being a smooth bore and I am certain that I am the first person in 81 years to see the fire control parts. The MSH channel is packed with leather dust. I am sure that this gun is all original. All of the wear patterns match and the hammer has struck the firing pin retaining plate so many times that the serial numbers are mirror imaged on the back of the plate.
No significant rust found anywhere. It has the single most horrible trigger pull that I have ever found on any gun in my life. The end of my finger turns white while pressing the trigger before it lets go.
Markings are all crisp and deep. I am pleased with that. One of the reasons that I wanted this old COLT is for the markings. The bluing is about 99% gone. The rear sight is a bit deformed as is the lanyard loop. I suspect this damage is from being dropped. The grip stocks are brown plastic and look, to me anyway, like USGI grip stocks. They are in remarkably good shape. They are not pristine, but they aren't beat up either. The serial number under the firing pin plate matches the frame number. There is a number factory roll marked on the top of the slide that does not match the serial number.
It passed all safety checks including head space. I was actually surprised by this. I have read countless posts on this forum about old COLTs having soft slides from the lack of heat treating. This pistol certainly doesn't have a soft slide. The recoil spring is very weak. It would not feed from the magazine until I replaced the spring with a new production COLT spring. Once done, it ran perfectly. I fired 20 rds each of factory 230 gr hardball, 200 gr lead semi wad cutters and Hornady XTP hollow points through it without any feed problems after the spring replacement. Shooting from a rest it would keep all rounds on an 8 1/2" X 11" sheet of paper @ 25 yrds, but just barely. All rds fired in groups of 5 with 6 rounds in the magazine. This was done to prevent the slide from locking on the last round thus corrupting the group.
I have the tools and skills to parkerize and GunKote guns, but I have zero experience with hot bluing. As this is the only gun that I own that I would even consider bluing, I am not motivated to set up for hot bluing one gun. But, I am not real enthused about having it blued by someone else. Would it be heresy to park and GunKote this Depression/Prohibition era Colt? Roosevelt was just months in office, Hitler was just elected Chancellor of Germany, and John Dillinger was robbing banks when this old COLT came off of the line. Would it be like putting a metal flake paint job on an original '34 Ford coupe to put GunKote on this old Colt?