Bergmann Simplex Pocket Pistols

hi guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian I'm here today the Rock Island auction company taking a look at a couple of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming December of 2016 premier auction specifically today we have the Bergman simplex this is a pocket pistol made by Theodor Bergman a simple gun as the name implies really it's a simple blowback mechanism fires an 8 by 18 millimeter cartridge that's actually pretty similar to the 32 automatic in power a little bit slower velocity so this fired a 71 grain bullet at about seven hundred and ninety feet per second these pistols were introduced right about 1900 maybe 1901 Bergman had been going through this whole series of developmental pistols starting very early and when he got to the number the number 5 Bergman was a very complex locked breech pistol and there was an experimental number 6 Bergman that kind of created this separate design track we're on on one side we ended up with the little blowback pocket simplex and the other path that was taken at the same time was for a military service pistol style of gun locked breech and a much more potent cartridge so this was actually kind of a dead end in that they built about four thousand simplex pistols by 1903 1903 sorry and that's as far as it went the problem with these guns is really just that they were outclassed by the other guns that were available at the time primarily the Browning model of 1900 which as its name implies had just come out at the same time it fired a very similar cartridge that was actually a little bit better and the Browning was a much more elegant pistol it was probably a more reliable pistol and it was probably a much cheaper pistol I don't have actual pricing data for these but I said in total only about 4000 of these were made there are a couple little variances between them that you'll see so let's go ahead and take a closer look and check some of those out all right so here are both of our simplex Asst and they they share the styling of the earlier Bergman pistols and actually if the later Bergman pistols especially with the exposed hammer and you have this the the rear of the bolt is this round kind of shape easy to grab these are plain blowback actions they don't lock open when empty but they do have detachable magazines now this is actually the wrong style of magazine this one is the later version which has a magazine release button right here and the magazine catch located right there however it does have the early style of magazine that doesn't have a cutout for the map for the magazine catch there but we can see the early version as well these earlier guns had a magazine catch on the front of the mag well and that's why there is a magazine a hole in the magazine right there similar to the Bergman number-5 locked-breech pistols these have a series of witness holes milled in both the magazine and the magazine well so you can keep an eye on how much ammunition you have left right right there on the side of the gun and then different sizes of magazines were made I believe a flush fitting magazine was five rounds despite the number of witness holes here and then you could definitely get I believe eight and ten round extended magazines as well so the magazines with both of these pistols are slightly extended as with many of the other Bergman pistols we have this style of trigger it's a single action only gun so [ __ ] the hammer and then you only then can you fire there is a manual safety here on the side which when rotated back disconnects the hammer from the trigger it's in the firing position again and then the rear sight is actually part of the locking the disassembly mechanism the rear sight is what's locking the recoil spring in place in this bolt so when we pull this back you can see the firing pin there in the middle of the bolt the recoil spring is being constricted here in the front and that is how the gun works it's very simple little thing as again the name would imply so the two different magazine release placements are the main variants of the simplex but there are some other changes that were made and different options available to purchasers so you can see the two front sights here are slightly different in style and they have different length barrels certainly barrel length was something that you could get you know easy enough to make different barrel lengths for something like this and so they were offered in a number of varieties serial numbers of these are located on the bottom of the but we have 2261 which is our early front release gun and 3516 which is our later side release gun and these pistols both show this engraved or stamped I suppose gaggenau marking on the bottom of the magazines that's the location where Bergman was manufacturing these there is some indication that production moved from gaggenau into Belgium and the result was some lower quality pistols but looking at examples like this I'm not really sure when that happened these both have German proof marks on them and serial number 3500 and change is pretty high if production ended at 4000 and they moved at some point to Belgium so I'm not entirely sure that that would have happened thanks for watching guys hope you enjoyed the video pretty cool to be able to take a look at both of the main variants of the birdmann simplex what with the two different magazine releases cool to see them both at the same time if you would like to add one or both to your own collection of Bergman's or use them to start a collection of Bergman's or pocket pistols or German pistols or any number of ways that these are a cool addition to a set of guns well take a look in the description text below you'll find links there to both of their catalog pages at Rock Island and if you would like to do so you can place bids over the phone on the web or here at the auction live in person thanks for watching what would you actually call two of these guns one is a simplex but what's the plural of simplex so because it's not simplex --is that's stupid sim if matrix becomes matrices would it be simplex cities simplicity's I think maybe we should just say that it's an outlier and if you have more than one you have a bergman complex you

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 107,383

Rating: 4.9847584 out of 5

Keywords: German, Germany, Gaggenau, Gagenau, Bergmann, Schmeisser, Simplex, 8mm, 8x18, history, colt, 1903, 1900, pocket, magazine, hammer, recoil, blowback, conceal, concealable, theodore bergmann, 32 acp, 32, forgotten, development

Id: WYXtYZDRAK8

Length: 7min 12sec (432 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2016