Korriphila HSP 701 in .38 Wadcutter

Edgar Budischowsky built the HSP 701 in numbers so small that any example turns heads. This one does something the others don't. It's chambered in .38 Wadcutter, a target caliber you will almost never find on this platform, and as far as anyone can establish, it stands alone in that form. The roll mark on the slide tells the story plainly. Mod. HSP 701, Made in Germany, with the Korriphila box logo forward of it and System Budischowsky on the opposite flank.

The build is what made Heidelberg's tiny shop a legend among people who care about how a pistol is actually put together. A roller-delayed locking system, machined steel throughout, and tolerances held tighter than almost anything coming out of a factory line. Production ran under thirty units a year from the mid 1980s, each one essentially made to order. You don't stumble across these. You wait for them.

The finish is a deep matte black bluing across slide and frame, even in tone, with the satin barrel showing through the ejection port and at the muzzle. Edges stay crisp where the light catches them. The walnut target grips wear a fine diamond checkering with smooth palm swells, warm reddish brown against the dark steel, secured top and bottom with slotted screws. The adjustable rear sight and the screw-adjustable trigger reach at the front of the guard mark this out as a gun built to be shot precisely, not just admired.

And it carries its paper. The pistol comes with the green factory box, the bilingual operating manual, and the original Korriphila delivery letter on company letterhead from the Heidelberg address, the one that walks a new owner through the adjustable double action pull. For the collector who already knows what a Korriphila is, a one-off chambering with factory documentation is the kind of thing that doesn't come around twice.