Colt 1900 38 ACP

[bouncer50]

I do know this was Colt first auto they made. This one i have was nickle plated years back. What i want to know is this gun safe to shoot. I do reload for 38 ACP but for a 115 year old gun with a different type of locking system that this early Colt used. I am a little afraid the slide flying off and hitting me in the face. The gun in great shape what would be a ball park value on it being nickle plated i do know it lost collecter value. Should i shoot it or be a safe queen.

[rintinglen]

Minty ones in original condition go for a grand-plus, hereabouts, but a modified gun was on the table for a couple of years with no takers for 600. It's a shooter, not a collector piece.
If mechanically sound, I'd cast up some 358-242 122 grain roundnose boolits and load them over 4.5-4.7 grains of Bullseye or 5.5-5.7 grains of Unique and have some fun recreating a 1920's day of shooting. If I got good ejection with the starting load, I'd try dropping it a tenth or two at a time until I got to a point where the gun started to malfunction then I'd bump it back up two tenths and call it good. It is a 115 years old, after all, and there is no future in beating it to death. The lightest load that functions well would be where I stayed.

[Bigslug]

Like rintinglen says, load it real light if you load it at all.

Personally, I'd get that out of my system and safe queen it for all but the most special occasions or if you're Jonesin' for a serious retro moment. If you want a low recoil, .35 caliber afternoon, there are far less expensive things you could break doing it. The 1900-1903 dual-link Colts are incredibly cool parts of John's "process" that gave us the 1911, but they aren't a perfected gun by any means, and nobody's ever going to make another one because of that. Be kind to your history!

[MtGun44]

Original ammo was loaded too hot and damaged the early Colts. Power was dropped
down to a 130 gr at about 1000-1100 fps. If I had it, I'd load as soft as I could get it
to function. No use flogging an old lady.

Bill