Super 38?'s

[roy reali]

I visited a gun store the other day. They had a Rock Island, 1911, in .38 Super for sale. It is a used gun, but it looks to be in excellent shape. It is nickel finished. The "out-the-door" price is about four hundred.

I would like to hear opinions on this particular firearm and/or cartridge.

I do reload, so any information on that would also be appreciated.

[Daryl]

I've never owned, or even shot one, but from what I've heard Rock Island makes a pretty decent 1911.

I've shot a lot of .38 Super over the years. It's a great cartridge with ballistics very similar to a .357 Sig. The one I've shot belonged to my dad, and it's a Colt Series 70 1911. Very nice, very accurate, and very fun to shoot.

The drawback is ammo availability and price. It's not as common as 9mm, .40 S&W, or even .357 Sig, so it tends to be more expensive. Good quality SD ammo is available from companies like Cor-Bon and others, but it can be hard to find. If you reload (I do), then you can alieviate a lot of the availability issues for practice, but many folks will only carry factory fodder for SD because of possible legal issues. Buying online in bigger amounts can help with that.

I still have several hundred rounds of .38 Super ammo here, and I hope to get that .38 Super of my dad's from his estate when/if it ever settles. It's a nice pistol with a bit of history behind it for me.

Daryl

[RickB]

I shoot .38 Super in IDPA competition, and like the cartridge for that purpose. The brass is strong and lasts a long time, and there are lots of bullets available. For just about any other use, I'd prefer .45 or 10mm in the 1911 platform.

[WC145]

I just traded one away last weekend, didn't need it any longer as I recently bought a Colt .38 Super. Mine was a great gun, accurate and reliable. The factory mag wasn't too reliable, replaced it with metalform mags and had no troubles. The GI sights suck, I replaced mine with a set of Fusion 3-dots. If I hadn't bought the Colt I'd have kept it.

The .38 Super is a great cartridge, accurate and powerful. Most of the FMJ and the Winchester Silvertips are loaded weak, under 1200fps, but you can get defensive ammo from Georgia Arms and Cor-Bon that send a 125gr JHP cooking along about 1350fps.

[BillCA]

Think of the .38 Super as the original 9x23mm. It's a fine cartridge because it has good power, very good accuracy and it will work well in several platforms, not the least of which is the 1911.

The .38 Super was developed by Colt in the 1920's as an answer to police requests for something more powerful than the .38 Special. The early .38's couldn't reliably penetrate the thick sheet metal of 1920's autobodies, just at a time when criminals were exploiting the automobile for quick getaways. S&W offered their .38/44 Hi-Speed in their N-Frame revolver which became more accepted in police circles.

If you reload, the .38 Super uses 9mm (.355") projectiles and the 124/125 grain bullets can be pushed into the 1200-1350 fps range with correct powder selections. .38 Super brass tends to last a long time (unless you have a brutal extractor). You can also download the .38 Super for more "fun" shooting too. With modern JHP bullets, like the Speer Gold Dot you can get very good SD performance out of the .38 Super.

Some 35 years ago, a friend of mine used his .38 Super with slightly heavier bullets to take down Coyotes while living near the desert.

[Rampant_Colt]

<edit>

They had a Rock Island, 1911, in .38 Super for sale. It is nickel finished.
My friend, do you really want a nickle-plated .38 Super 1911?
Blue .45 ACP RI 1911s are readily available for about the same price.. I'm trying to save you from all of the jeers and "pimp-hand bling" comments soon to follow.

It only needs some pearl grips & gold-plated appointments :p

[Old Grump]

Traded mine for a 357, traded the 357 for a horse. Wish I had the 38 super back. :(

[pythagorean]

The .38 Super doesn't do anything more than a 9mm today. Check it out. A useless round unless you reload your own.

[WC145]

They had a Rock Island, 1911, in .38 Super for sale. It is nickel finished.

Oooh!!! Shiny!!! I missed the nickel part of the post, mine was parkerized, if it was nickel I'd have kept it. Heck, if I saw one for $400 I'd buy it now. In fact, I've been kicking around the idea of sending my Colt off to be nickel plated since it's a 1991A1, not a particularly special or desirable model.

Something about a bright polished or nickel plated .38 Super 1911 that trips my trigger!

[Peter M. Eick]

Funny, I think just the opposite.

I always wonder why there are so many shiny 38 supers out there. I pass everyone of them by. Glad to see that someone wants them.

Obviously I am in the minority because most Supers I see are chromed or nickeled.

[BillCA]

Peter,

The nickle or polished finish of a lot of .38 Supers is part of the Hispanic influence in southern states. In years gone by, many .38 Super pistols were shipped to dealers in Mexico for sale there. Mexico prohibits the civilian use of "police or military" calibers, so the .38 Super is one of the few ways to own a Colt 1911. And due to the climate, many of the guns there were bought with nickel finishes to ward off rust.

In some of the more heaviliy Hispanic towns here in Calfornia, it's not uncommon to find nickel plated .38 Supers or highly polished stainless ones selling reasonably well.