This week was another Half-Price Books coupon week. And I picked up a few things. Most of the books I bought were firearms related, so I thought I’d pull a Lawrence and document some of them here.
Small Arms Profile 17: Smith and Wesson Tip-Up Revolvers. This is a thin little pamphlet dated January 1973, and published by Profile Publications Ltd. in the UK. Profile had at least 17 other books on various types of small arms (including one specifically on ammunition). It also looks like they had separate series for aircraft, cars, and warships: I think they catered, at least in part, to model makers. This had a cover price of $2 US/40p UK in 1973 dollars: sources tell me that’s closer to $20 in 2018 money.
I was a little hesitant to shell out $6 for an 18 page British handgun publication, until I opened the front cover and saw “By Roy G. Jinks”. That’s pretty much a “must buy” flag.
Defensive Pistol Fundamentals by Grant Cunningham. This isn’t particularly rare or hard to find, but I note it here because it is one of KR Training‘s recommended books. $10 with no coupon discount (because I used the coupon for other things), which is inline with Amazon’s new price, but this is pretty much “like new” as well. I don’t feel rooked.
And I’ve written before about how much I like picking up those Firearms Classics books at a steep discount. I added a few more to the collection:
Not from the Firearms Classics library, but a limited edition reprint (#1383 of 1500) from “Wolfe Library Classics”: Big Game Rifles and Cartridges by Elmer Keith. (Originally published by Thomas G. Samworth, much like so many of these other books in my library.) $12 after 40% off coupon.
(Damn. I really ought to pick that up.)
Firearms Curiosa by Lewis Winant. I’ve only had a chance to flip quickly through this since I bought it on Friday, but it looks like a whole lot of fun: there’s an entire chapter, for example, on “Knife Pistols and Cane Guns”. Not a Samworth book, oddly. $6 after 40% off coupon.
Actual Firearms Classics Library reprints of actual Samworth books: With British Snipers to the Reich by “Captain C. Shore” (“a classic hands-on, nuts and bolts, how to sniping book” according to the intro), and Shots Fired In Anger by Lt. Col. John B. George. What I didn’t know, until I flipped through the introduction to Shots, is that these two books complete my quartet of Samworth “war” books (the other two being McBride’s A Rifleman Went to War and Dunlap’s Ordnance Went Up Front). Together, the two of these with one coupon were $22.50: I probably could have gotten away with making three trips instead of just two, but I didn’t want to push my luck. And I’d been looking for a copy of With British Snipers for several months now.
Finally, this is in the Firearms Classics Library, but I think this copy may be a true first (I’m having trouble tracking down bibliographic information):
Experiments of a Handgunner by Walter F. Roper. Roper was a somewhat famous gun guy: among other accomplishments, he designed the N-frame “Target” grip for Smith and Wesson revolvers. Yeah, the dust jacket is pretty badly worn (it has a plastic cover protector). But I’ve never seen a copy of this before – Firearms Classics or otherwise – and it was $12.50 after coupon.
