In the early days of Glock’s entry into the US, Karl Walter was hired to head up sales and marketing. Walter knew that gaining entry into the police service market would lead to civilians sales. To that end, the company was willing to work out amenable pricing and also to add scroll work to sweeten the deal.
The first department to formally adopt Glock pistols was from the small town of Colby, KS but the strategy quickly yielded follow up orders from other (and larger) departments. The state of Kansas seemed to be receptive to the new pistols as the state’s alcohol beverage control agency was an early adopter as well as the earliest known scroll marked guns bear the lettering “K.S. A.B.C.” Model 17s from the CP prefix, date coded from 1987 bear this marking as well as some of the AN prefix model 19s with date codes from 1988.
Early prefixes were not usually manufactured in serial order so the AN guns were made after the CP guns.
Perhaps the most famous early police guns came from the District of Columbia, a large department of approximately 3,000 officers. Model 17s first appeared in the E block with “MPDC” scrolled on the slide. The E block was produced in 1988 and 1989 according to proof marks, but was split between generations 1 and 2 as well as models 17 and 19. As far as MPDC guns, there have been at least 4 variations observed: 1st generation model 17s (all E block), 2nd generation 19s with the MPDC scroll (also part of the E block), and then a later contract of 2nd generation 17s and 19s without the scroll mark that were given a special serial range beginning with “MP” and ending with “DC” with 4 numbers between them. Nearly 4,000 of this variant have been observed (the highest known number is 3804).
One other quirk of the MPDC guns was their long service life. The Gen 1s served in the department for twenty-five years before finally being traded in–thus most of the examples found today have extensive wear. The Gen 2s appeared on the secondary market sometime after 2020 and can still be found for sale occasionally, though it is harder to date their manufacture date with the special serial range.
The high profile of the nation’s capital police carrying the new Glock firearm certainly helped to bolster sales efforts for the new company. By the turn of the decade, police acceptance and overall US sales far exceeded the most enthusiastic estimates of the nascent company but the company has continued to grow both markets into the new century. By 2020, nearly 65% of all police departments in the US accepted or issued Glock pistols and the company was easily the number one seller in the civilian market.
As the early MPDC guns attest, the durability of the design became it’s calling card as the guns could always be counted on to function safely in the harshest of condition and for many years of service life.
The collecting market for police marked Glocks is just beginning to take off and these early issues bring some of the heaviest premiums of those known. A KSABC Glock 19 will easily fetch $25,000 if not more but any marked gun can often sell for more than $1,000. But as with all Glocks, a majority of shooters and gun dealers are unaware of their collectible nature so it’s still easy to snag police trade-ins at your local pawn shop or gun store for around $400. Just be sure to keep your new found knowledge on the down low so we can keep finding these deals 😉
~ThatGlockGuy
A Brief History of Glock Firearms Aimed at Collectors 