Elmer Keith m1917

[Slamfire]

Guy at the range brings out this P17. A rifle from the estate of his grandfather. Been in the family since WWII.

I believe this stands for Ogden Arsenal, Elmer Keith. Elmer Keith was inspecting rifles at OG, and stamped his personal inspector stamp on rifles he inspected. Seen one of these once before. Did not have a camera with me.

You can see that the stamp was cocked at an angle when Elmer stamped the rifle, and that he stamped his inspector's stamp upside down. I reversed it in the upper picture.

I wonder if this increases the value of the rifle, after all, there are only so many rifles that Elmer Keith handled.

 

[Mauserguy]

That's cool.
Mauserguy

 

[surfinUSA]

Yeah probably only 10,000 or so

 

[SaxonPig]

Keith wrote in his book of doing this work and indeed thousands of guns were stamped but how many are still around? I would find it cool to have a gun he fired and stamped and I suspect others might pay a little extra for such a gun. Huge amount? Probably not.

 

[Kor]

I also have an "OGEK" stamped 1917, priced by the dealer @ $495.00 in 2000, which I acquired by trading a stainless Randall 1911.

IIRC there is a difference in the cartouche stamp if the rifle was inspected personally by Elmer Keith, vs. simply denoting that the rifle passed through the Ogden Arsenal during his tenure as Chief Inspector.