M54 Chinese Tokarev

Retired Sarge · Jun 8, 2024

Picked this up this morning at a gunshow, about 2 hours away, that my son-in-law and I decided to go to at the last minute.

Little confused on it though as I can't quite figure out the year manufactured. There is no arsenal marking or date marking on it.

No frame installed (Hammer) safety on it, plus the trigger doesn't have the two visible pins in it, for the Glock style trigger safety. So it's in an original military configuration and is stamped M54 on the top of the slide in Chinese.

The frame and slide SN match, haven't disassembled it yet to checked for other SN'ed parts. Came with the typical blue corduroy lined holster.

Some sites believe these may be imported from Albania. Different sites have different ways to date these, hence my confusion on its date of birth.

Several sites says take 53 and add the first 2 digits of the SN 32 and you get 85 for the year made. Did they make military ones in 86, as far as I can tell no they didn't. Found on another site a SN list and one close to mine that is actually dated has a 1956 date. Found on third site where they used a different (Weird) formula that made me see cross-eyed.

Anyways here's the preliminary photos of it.

Yang Hao · Jun 9, 2024

The 54 might also be a reference to the May 4th movement which happened in 1919.
This site might help you with more information on your 54式手枪. It's in Chinese so you will need to translate it into english.

54式手枪 - 维基百科，自由的百科全书

zh.wikipedia.org

Retired Sarge · Jun 11, 2024

Some interesting curve balls with this pistol.

The slide is marked on the top with 五四式 (or 五四式手槍 or wǔsì shì shǒuqiāng for Type 54 handgun). Chinese confuses the heck out of me, since a simple word can be interpreted in several different ways.

So 五四式 with 3295848 under it, the slide doesn't appear to have been scrubbed and remarked, so the slide is from a military issued M54. The frame has 3295848 but no Arsenal marking or date marking.

Then when viewed at an angle ghosting of numbers appear before, under/in and after the 3295848 serial number. We can see 30109?2 the ? Is covered by the 3 in the current SN, but it looks like it might be a 2. Then at the end of the current SN there appears to be a 53.

So the frame was scrubbed of markings during refurbishment and numbered to match the slide SN. Now if what we think is a 53 is a 53, then the frame can't be from a Type 54 pistol, it would have to be from a Type 51. Which is the same pistol in reality. When the Chinese were being trained by the Soviets to make the TT33 they initially called it the Type 51, when China started making them on their own they redesignated it the Type 54.

Now the defective work starts, as I need to see if I can find any ghosting on the right side of the frame. That would prove it to be a Type 51 frame.

Pictures showing the ghosting of the original serial number.