POTD: Dardick Corporation Model 1500 Auto Loading Revolver
Sam.S 08.31.21
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Finally! I have been hoping to come across a Dardick ever since I talked about the Gyrojet in a separate Photo of the Day. These pistols are technically auto-loading revolvers. It uses triangular-shaped caseless ammunition called trounds. Like the gyrojet few were made and even less were appreciated in their time. These guns popped up in the late 1950s and went into the 1960s. This was the era of people becoming fascinated with what the future held and turned up their imagination to 11.
“Discontinued in 1962, the Dardick combined a fixed in-grip magazine with a 3-chamber open sided cylinder to feed the proprietary “Tround”, a triangular plastic cartridge. Blade front and adjustable rear sights, with the address on the barrel, model markings on the frame, and checkered plastic grips with “DC” Dardick logos. With a Dardick box, an extra 4″ barrel, seventeen (yes, seventeen) 38 caliber Trounds in an original box, and a pair of oversized Trounds, one 5″ long and loaded with a roughly 50 caliber bullet, the other 4″ and loaded with three 30 caliber ceramic bullets. The purpose of the 50 caliber Tround is unknown, but the 30 caliber volley Tround, originally developed as part of Project SALVO for use in the H&R Special Purpose Individual Rifle, later became part of the Dardick Terra-Drill, a system used for oil drilling where the projectiles are used to pre-fracture rock for an increase in drilling speed and bit life. Consignor notes state that this grouping was acquired from the estate of a Dardick executive, and that the larger Trounds are from a small run of 50 supplied to the Aberdeen Proving Ground.”
Lot 609: Dardick Corp 1500 Pistol 38 [Photograph found in Auction Catalog #53, Rock Island Auction Company]. (n.d.). Retrieved August 31, 2021, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/53/609
