Hi guys, this is my first post on the bunker forum, just thought I would kick it off with this! It's my deact C96 bolo Mauser, it was manufactured 1920/22 and comes with the stock pictured.
These postwar Bolos account for nearly a third of all C-96 production. Any customer for new Mauser pistols throughout most of the 1920s would buy Bolos. Just who was buying large quantities of military pistols in those days isn't clear. The Bolo is associated with the Bolsheviks (although the Party had changed its name to the Communist Party in 1918 - and the bol prefix in Russian means large, an odd nickname for a relatively small gun). Although there was considerable fighting after World War One in Russia, Poland, Turkey, and Greece, that had all settled down, more or less, by 1922 or so. In any event, large numbers of Mauser pistols ended up in Russia. They must have appreciated them, as the Red Army adopted the cartridge in 1930 as the 7.62x25 mm Tokarev.
Note that although the Bolo is sometimes called the "small frame" Mauser, the only thing smaller about the frame is the grip area. Everything else - including all pieces of the lock mechanism - is exactly the same size. In fact, the internal parts are interchangeable between Bolos and full size guns.