A couple years ago, I decided to sell an old G17 Gen 3 that I had and replace it with a G19X. Upon doing so, I discovered that Gen 3 Glocks have desireability to people who live in certain states with gun restrictions. Is this the same case for Gen 3 magazines that are 17-rounders?

Nope. They are just regular Glock 17 mags, nothing special.

I believe you are referring those commy states like Ca.?
I don't think it's grandfathered regards mags. Only 10/rd.
But, someone in Ca can verify that.

Some other states in northeast can only have earlier mags
than gen 3 if you want to refer to Glock mags as "gen etc"...

There are more Glock mag variations than Glock pistol
gun generations by a wide margin.

OK.....I doubted there was a grandfather aspect to the Gen 3.....17 rounders.

There is a grandfathered aspect in some states.

Several years ago I bought several lots of Glock
mags and they came from the northeast. There were
a lot of early mags in those and I needed a few to
match time frame of some of my guns. The rest
I parted with and they were replaced with new Glock
mags by the guy who needed grandfathered mags.

I can't remember which state he was from. I wanta say Mass or Conn.

OK thanks.

As previously mentioned, there is nothing special or “grandfathered” about “Gen 3” Glock magazines. A square notch Glock magazine is not pre-ban and is thus not grandfathered in Massachusetts. The only Glock magazines that fetch a premium are pre-ban magazines (round notch).

Attached File


*I forgot that there was 1 iteration of pre-ban magazines that has a square notch. In fact, I believe they are the most desirable because they are the most recently manufactured and and metal lined. You can identify them by the 2 metal dots above “17” and “18.”

Yeah, during the ban, the question was always "U-notch or square notch" when discussing pre-ban magazines, because the square notch indicated the more desirable full metal lining - a.k.a. "drop free." I always thought the fixation with drop free magazines was way overblown. In case anyone doesn't know, when Glock designed their metal-lined U-notch mag, the liner stopped about an inch from the bottom of the magazine, which would cause the full magazine to swell and stick in the magwell. As I understand it, their idea was that it would help keep people from accidentally dropping a full mag out of the gun if they bumped the mag release. Once the magazine was (fired) empty, the sides would return to their normal shape and allow the magazine to drop free. So when people referred to a pre-ban magazine as "drop free," what they really meant was that it dropped free when fully loaded, which isn't something people normally intend to do if they're in a fight, unless maybe they had a malfunction. As typically happens, people thought that you had to have the latest and greatest product, or you were undoubtedly destined to perish when the first shot was fired, if your life depended on the now-inferior previous design.

I'll caveat that by saying that I don't know if the plastic sides of the U-notch magazines eventually developed "memory" and retained the bulge at the bottom from being loaded longterm.