Black Army?

[Marcus von W.]

There are also a number of 1911 and 1911A1 pistols that were legally acquired, but had the U.S. Property and military model markings removed and were refinished by owners who wanted the pistol to look more like a commercial model (like many WW2 military Harleys and Indians are made to look like civilian models by dum basses who think this somehow makes them more desirable, valuable, and/or better looking) or to avoid the risk of the pistol being mistaken for one that was never officially released for sale by the government. Some are even chrome or nickel plated to make 'em look real purty.

Sometimes you also run into pistols that the military refinished and assembled out of 1911 slides on 1911A1 frames or 1911A1 slides on 1911 frames, with various era mixed parts. I've seen a few of these where you have to look the gun over and do a quick mental inventory of the different parts and their numbers and markings "WW1 Colt frame, WW2 Remington Rand slide, earlier 1911A1 checkered parts, etc" to figure out exactly what you are looking at.

And there are those "put together" guns of various ancestry and quality that have military slides on various military and commercial frames, or vice versa. I see a lot of military slides on Argentine Sistema frames and commercial frames like Essex. Some of these are actually pretty nice and well done guns, others are real cobble jobs.