Second gen Glocks are a growing segment of the collector market and an immense opportunity for future profits. Over my years of being involved with Glocks, I’ve noticed just how inefficient the marketplace really is on this segment. Gen 2s have sold as high as $2500 and as low as $250 (those were both DN prefix 19 prices) and there are enough out on the market to pretty well guarantee there will always be opportunities.

Last week I snagged the above 2nd gen 19 for $450, which was a pretty good deal from where I’m standing. But I started looking at the magazines and noticed another variation that I had never had in my possession before. Depending on how you break down magazines, the collector’s community has identified about 40 different variations just with the model 17 differences. I’ve managed to collect most of those variations, but until this week, I had never had a “u” marked mag.

Prior to 1994, there were a lot of variations and Glock marked them all differently so they can be distinguished. The national Assault Weapons Ban went into effect in September of 1994 and limited the civilian market to a maximum 10rd capacity for all future magazines. Governmental agencies and law enforcement were exempted from this requirement necessitating a way of differentiating the magazines. Due to the millions of magazines already in existence, the legislation did not attempt to outlaw previously produced magazines.

The Glock company soon took advantage of this “loophole” in the law which is where the “u” mark came in to play. From the beginning, the company aggressively cultivated relationships with police departments which reaped many benefits once the capacity ban was in place. Obviously, there were a large number of guns and magazines already out in the market and as the production of standard capacity mags was made illegal, the price of those mags escalated quickly. Glock capitalized on this new market via police trade ins. They offered to take used guns from departments in exchange for brand new ones so long as the department included all the used magazines along with the firearms. These used mags frequently sold for $100 or more on the open market so it was more than enough to make up for the difference in price between used and new guns.

The mags were stamped with a “u” to designate that they were used but that has created a whole subset of mag variations for collectors to chase. Judging from my personal experience, these are not encountered nearly as frequently as non-marked mags all things being equal. In fifteen years of collecting, this is the first marked mag I’ve encountered and I have quite an extensive collection of early mags. This one is especially cool because of the early “+2” base.