DWM 513A cartridge - original Test Luger round

[Edward Tinker]

In 2013 I was at a Pennsylvania Cartridge Collecting show and talked to a fellow forum member (thank you Johnny) and he put me in touch with a collector that had a DWM made 45 acp - an original cartridge from the test trials. I asked another forum member for some help in determining its authenticity and he said, IF another one ever comes up for sale..." I offered it to him, and he took it.


Come back to 2 weeks ago and the same collector reached out to me, and he had another cartridge for sale. In his words...

, I do have a single round of the .45 DWM 513 A. The headstamp on the base of the cartridge case is as follows: at twelve o'clock, it reads DWM (capital letters), at six o'clock, it reads 513 A (capital A with the numerals 513 approximately the same heighth as the letters), and at 9 o'clock and three o'clock there is a capital K, for Karlsruhe , one of "Deutche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken" (DWM)'s manufacturing plants. The cartridge has a brass case, a small brass Berdan primer, a cupronickle, roundnose full metal jacket bullet that is slightly blunter at the tip than the familiar American 230 grain ball round. It has a slight cannelure around the case at the base of the bullet. It is difficult sometimes to tell if there is an actual cannelure ( a groove pressed or cut into a cartridge case to support the base of a bullet) or a slight reduction in the diameter of the cartridge to form a sort of shelf that supports the bullet. My copy of Fred A. Datig's book " DWM CARTRIDGES 1896-1956" shows a drawing of the 513 A case with the heading : "Autom. Colt-Pistole Kal. 11.43mm (.45") Amerikan. Armee Mod." and a definite cannelure.


The story of the cartridge, as told to me by other collectors, is that a Swiss gentleman discovered a partial box of the 513 A ammunition, and like iron filings to a magnet, the cartridges were drawn to the American cartridge collecting network. Ever since the first self-contained cartridges were produced, people world wide have been collecting them.


It was in the U.S. however, that the first cartridge collecting clubs, newsletters and cartridge shows were organized. Also, there are more cartridge collectors in America than any where else in the world. So with a greater demand, the majority (but not all) of the DWM 513 A cartridges have disappeared into American collections. A lot of collectors specialize in .45 a.c.p. ammunition, others in military ammo, still others like automatic pistol rounds.There are scads of fanatical DWM collectors who want one of every case number made by DWM. Just my DWM book is worth hundreds of dollars to those guys! The 513A cartridge IS the Crown Jewel of a number of different collecting specialties.

This is now sitting in my collection