matt said:
I recently had a MA dealer try to sell me a hicap mag of unknown manufacturing date and told me it was not a problem. It was a good price too from what I've seen (~$50 for a 15rnd Sig226, I've seen ~$80 for ones cetrified as pre-ban in AG Guns).
No wonder it was a good price... he was looking for a sucker to take it off his hands...
![[shocked]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/007.gif "Shocked [shocked]")
Too bad, I'd heard good things about that shop too...
Matt
The thing is though... is how do we quantify what "Certified pre ban"
is/means?
In the case of say, a Sig P226, I know that there were mags that
simply say "SigSauer" on the side and others that say "SigSauer P226"
on the side. Of course there are also MecGars floating
around.... some of which are SigSauer marked and some which
are not, like the flush fit 17 round mags. (MecGar is now the OEM of
all Sig mags, I think).
The only real certain indicator is LEO markings... and of course any mag
made after 2004 domestically or made in a foreign country typically doesnt
have these markings at all. And then theres the "this gun didnt
exist, so therefore the prebans couldnt have existed" but even that has
holes in it sometimes.... like the problem with the USP45 mags. (there
was a guy that imported them before the gun was availiable domestically,
as he knew there would be a demand for them after the ban took effect!)
Of course... there are things that can make people suspicious, such as
the newness of the magazine, or whatever, but I have at least one Glock
NFML mag that "looks new" so I dont know if that really amounts to anything,
either. (the only conclusion that one can reasonably make is "oh, well,
NFML is old, so it -must- be preban") Otherwise we're just grabbing
at straws, more or less. Until someone from, say, Sigarms comes
out and like publishes a memo showing magazines, markings/other identifying
characteristics, and dates of production, its going to be very hard
to tell what you're getting.
Another confusing thing with Sigarms is that some of the newer mags
are blued, and some are parkerized. While it might be a fair bet
that the blued ones are post, what further screws this up is that mecgars
have almost always been blued, even before the ban... and to top it off,
mecgar is the sig OEM anyways... which makes things that much more
complicated.
Other manufacturers get even more dicey... the Beretta especially....
yeah there are the Beretta 92 italian factory mags... but then there are
at least a half dozen styles of knockoffs that seemed to work pretty well too,
and those are in common use and often sold as "preban". There are
so many Beretta 92 mags out there, that even during the middle of the
ban the price on them never really went over $50, depending on where
you got them from. There were a ton of the "taiwanese military" mags
floating around which had no markings whatsoever on them.... the only
way you could ID these mags was by their weak/cheap springs... other
than the springs, they worked great. (throw a wolff +10% in em and they'd
act normally)
-Mike
