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Looking at post 27 reminds me of a Mauser military pistol we had in the Army collection in the school in New Brunswick. It was in the white inside and I had no idea how that would have happened. It was a broomhandle with matching serial # stock. Just about perfect too.
Check out the NAA item 1-818, Military Pistols
1-1032 is another interesting offering. An aftermarket receiver and an Ithaca slide for only $1295.
Interesting pics on the NAA. Things that I had no way of knowing without seeing that. The hammer was smooth, other parts looked like they were made without examples to work from. The mag is two tone but no lanyard loop. Inside machining was good but simple. The word limited was smaller than the rest of the roll mark.
Still, I could never afford such guns so I'll have to settle for pics.
The North American hammers never made it as far as the checkering process, and the mainspring housings did not have a lanyard loop.
Ordnance dropped the lanyard loop on the magazines early in 1916, and the last Colt pistols shipped with the LL magazines were in October of 1915.
The North American has definitely been refinished, The blueing is wearing fairly evenly, not flaking. As stated in the ad, the legend does not show correctly... The lettering appears narrower than others. Wish we could see the MSH... it should not have any provision for a loop.
I have seen one North American (photos of it are on CoolGunSite) that has a checkered hammer - not the normal smooth one. (The rest of that pistol is all as expected and original.) It is important to remember that all of these were toolroom prototypes, and other parts may have been used in the assembly (such as a Colt hammer in this case).
The ad is stating that the Limited that tapers off at the end is correct.
Yup - the location, size, and tapering of the "Limited" all appear close to correct, as well as other subtleties of the text... that's not the issue I see with it. All of the lettering of the font itself is very narrow... not as wide as the correct legend. The only way I can think of to make lettering thinner is to make the original wider letters go away, and re-engrave (etch, or ??) the letters. (The ad mentioned that he thought the legend had been "refreshed as they now appear engraved not roll stamped...") I tend to agree.
If they were all toolroom prototypes, anything is possible. Prototypes generally all show variations.
I have to agree on the (problematic) lettering. With the very small sample size that I have actually looked at, there's quite a bit of variation in the lettering. Certain letters are thicker than others for instance. I don't see that same variation here, there's much more consistency in the lettering on this one.
For instance, I think that the words "NORTH" and "QUEBEC" should be much fatter/thicker. That said, a lot of the other letters look right, like the word "Limited". I'm no expert on these, but I would be a bit reluctant on this one (and not just because it's a lot of money!).