Help identifying this round

[Art M.]

Hello all
I recently purchased some factory ammo for a vintage .38 auto pistol.
The ammo is headstamped "aguila .38 auto", sadly it's not in it's orignal box.
When trying to find some information on this round all I can find are references to aguila making a .38 super round, so now I am leery about using this ammo whithout confirming what I got.
If anyone out there is familiar with, or has some aguila .38 super could you tell me what the headstamp reads? I think this would be easier than asking someone to come up with another .38 auto round.
I will post pictures of the headstamp tomorrow when I get my camera back.
Thanks for your help.

 

[The Wiry Irishman]

Do you have calipers? A measurement of the case length would really help narrow it down.

 

[Art M.]

Yes, I do. I can post the measurements, however I was under the impresion the .38 super and the .38 auto are dimensionally identical, the only difference being the .38 super being loaded to higher pressures.

 

[The Wiry Irishman]

Yup, you're right. I got confused and was thinking they lengthened the .38 Super case by 1mm to prevent chambering in .38 auto guns like they did with .38 special/.357 and .44 special/.44 mag. Apparently all they did was change the headstamp.

I pulled this from a Google Translate view of a Japanese site, I wouldn't take it as 100% credible without confirmation from another source, but it looks like that is indeed the Aguila headstamp for .38 auto.

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.k5.dion.ne.jp/~sak/main/Cartridges/38AUTO.html&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&usg=ALkJrhgS-AJnayqauZUsL0p3zdrQVn4wZQ