I found a colt at a show that I thought was pretty cool and wasn't a bad price.  I started to do some research on it later and the serial of C 53xxx shows that it was made in 1916 as a civilian model.  Markings all seem to be correct except for a stamping on the left side of the frame that I could not/cannot quite make out.

I can see what looks to be an AHL (pitting for the next two characters) 3AKA3b.  The letters may be cyrillic but I would not even know what that looks like so I'm thinking it might be an inspectors stamp of some sort.  Any thoughts?  I'm just trying to get any history that this Colt may have.  It's a keeper no matter what the markings are.

PICS!

It's not an inspector's mark.
Colt commercial guns never used much more than a single letter for inspector's stamps.
Sounds like a 1911 that's been overseas and picked up some foreign stamps.

If I remember right there were some lend lease Colts that went to Russia

I'll try tonight for some pics.  

Well...Here are the pics.  Tell me what you think.  I did some research and they do seem to by cyrillic letters but if someone can confirm it would be great.  Thoughts on value?  It does have some pitting as you can see from the pics but I figure that if I was made in 1916 I might have some too.  Tried to give different angles on the pics as it's hard to show.

...and no I didn't disassemble it and put that nasty scratch in it.....it's how I bought it...

See if this helps.  

Yup..looked at that today.  The translation seems to match what's in the books that I have.  The russian marked ones are supposed to read ANGLO ZAKAZIVAT.  The Anglo seems to match even though I cannot read whats destroyed by the pitting.  The other word though doesn't seem to be complete.  The IVAT is MIA.  

Kind of why I'm asking if anyone can verify at this point.  It would be nice to see I stumbled on something but on the other hand without knowing it could be a fake and I would never know.

Angl zhakazh  Angl denotes England and zhakazh is a derivative of zhakazhat, to order or reserve.

That's an M1911.  (note, not A1)

I'm not familiar with Russo-Soviet lend-lease stampings, but it would appear to be of a lend-lease nature that originated in England.

Cheers,

kk7sm

The makhkeey zhnak at the end of zhakazh indicates that's probably the end of the word.  I don't think much else followed.  It's customary to separate two words that are "crushed together" with one of those sometimes, but I don't think so in this case.  Zhakazhiva, like you were looking for, is the imperfect of zhakazhat, and would be conjugated like you say above.  Conjugated as zhakazhat, it is supposed to be spelled with the makhkeey zhnak at the end.  That would look to us like a lower case b.

Either way, it's probably authentic.

By the way, not to pick a point with the previous chart, but in my class, we were taught the makhkeey zhnak is the "hard sign."  

Looks like it was salvaged off the Titanic by Bob Ballard! Wow, what pitting!

it was a1911 commercial purchased by the russian gov't during the 1915-18 time frame. at that time colts london office was coordinating shipments of guns to imperial russia so the pistols were marked with russian markings equivalent to the words english order. these are pretty rare as not many made the way back out of russia and those hat did look like uyours pretty rough

You gonna fire it? I would if the frame and slide are'nt corroded together. Fuck it dude.