*SOLD* Mauser C96 7.63×25mm Mauser 5.5"*FEATURES WOODEN COMBINATION HOLSTER STOCK*

A broomhandle-shaped grip. A box magazine in front of the trigger. A long, slender barrel. The Mauser C96’s unique silhouette makes it one of the most standout pistols in gun collecting.

The exotic look of the Mauser C96 made it a favorite in the entertainment industry, with author Ian Fleming depicting Mauser pistols as the preferred sidearm of the sinister SMERSH agents in the James Bond series, and the Mauser played a prominent role in Clint Eastwood’s 1972 Western, ‘Joe Kidd.' Today, the C96 can be found on screen in period dramas like Peaky Blinders, and most modern audiences will recognize the Mauser pistol as being the basis for Han Solo’s DL-44 Heavy Blaster, perhaps the most iconic of all Star Wars guns.

The Mauser self-loading pistol is known by many names, slangs, and designations. The Broomhandle. The Pistole 7.63. It’s most common moniker today, the Mauser C96, refers to its first year of production in 1896. The C96 was the brainchild of three brothers employed with Mauser – Fidel, Freidrich, and Josef Feederle. Though company co-founder Paul Mauser initially dismissed the Freederle design, the concept slowly grew on him, especially as he realized Mauser was falling behind in the race to bring a self-loading pistol to market that could compete with new inventions like the 1893 Borchardt. From its factory in the picturesque German town of Oberndorf, Mauser began testing the Mauser C96 (Construktion 1896) in March of 1895.

The Mauser C96’s “Broomhandle” nickname caught on in the English-speaking world, a reference to the gun’s round wooden grip. The Broomhandle moniker quickly became a catch-all term for the entire series of pistol models manufactured by Mauser and its eventual foreign copycats. Though the Mauser C1896’s unique pistol grip was far from the gun’s only standout characteristic, the Broomhandle slang became too popular to ignore or rebrand. It was eventually embraced by Mauser in some countries and even used in official marketing. In China, a different nickname emerged that highlighted one of the pistol’s other distinctive design elements— the "Box Cannon.”

China’s “Box Cannon” colloquialism referenced the Mauser C96’s rectangular internal magazine, a unique feature of its silhouette. Rounds are fed from a stripper clip into the Mauser pistol’s box magazine, which is located in front of the trigger mechanism. The Mauser 96’s clip-fed, top-loading internal box magazine system was functional, but the intricate set of internal processes that had to be performed before a round was safely fired was a complex undertaking for the era.

Similar to many semi-automatic designs since, the Mauser operated as a short recoil system. The C96's rectangular slide was machined as a one-piece unit with the barrel. When a cartridge is fired, the Mauser's locking assembly beneath the barrel seals the breach through a one-piece steel block with a locking lug that engages a slot in the lower surface of the bolt.

The recoil drives back the bolt, which is locked to the barrel extension by the bolt lock. The bolt block pivots downward to disengage the lugs and allows the bolt to travel rearward to carry out the cycle of extracting and ejecting the spent round casing; automatically reloading and recocking the weapon courtesy of a return spring.

The most common accessory for the Mauser C96, as well as its most famous, is the pistol’s combination holster stock. When not holstering the pistol, these combination stocks could be attached to the Mauser C96 and transform the weapon into a pistol carbine that could be fired from the shoulder. This was a popular option, given that the C96’s 7.63x25mm Mauser cartridge was considered the highest velocity commercially manufactured pistol cartridge of its era, a flat-shooting round known for its power and accuracy.