POTD: Colt’s Unreleased Pen Gun – Prototype Colt T-12 Pistol 12mm
Sam.S 07.23.21
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Secret agents! Special operations! Gadgets! Here we have the Colt T-12 Pen Gun. This little guy is only a prototype and is suspected to have been in development for spies of the cold war era. I previously covered the Braverman stinger pen gun and talked about how I have shot one. That one legally has to be made to look like a gun before it can fire. This one does not, however; therefore, it would technically be an AOW.
“This is a beautiful example of a very interesting and unique Colt T-12 single shot prototype pen gun. It is theorized that weapons of this type might have been developed or employed by early OSS/SOE or later CIA espionage agents. The pen gun functions very much like the current stinger or pen guns that were used through out the cold war only era of the 1950s and 1960s only it’s an extremely small or miniaturized version that fires a 12mm cartridge. The overall length of the pen gun is approximately 2 inches and it has a 1/2 inch barrel that unscrews on the front end. As you can imagine it is extremely small and can easily fit into the palm of your hand or ones shirt or pants pocket. The gun functions or fires by unscrewing the barrel loading a single cartridge and then just retracting the cocking knob located on the side of the action which is screwed into the fixed firing pin and either just locking it in to the safety catch or releasing it to fire the cartridge. The body of the pen is machined steel with circular cuts on the front and rear section of the pen to aid in gripping the weapon, with a brass end cap. The side of the pen is marked “COLT T-12”. It is housed in a small wooden storage box that measures approximately 2 1/2 X 1 1/2 inches with a white paper label on top that reads “.12 CAL/COLT T-12/US PROPERTY”. It has an all blued steel finish that is complete with two brass dummy (non-firing) display cartridges.
-Rock Island Auction Company”
Lot 404: Colt T-12 Pistol 12 mm [Photograph found in Auction Catalog #49, Rock Island Auction Company]. (n.d.). Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/49/404/colt-t12-pistol-12-mm
