Colonel Custer
New member
My wife knowing that I've been searching for a TT33 or clone of some type found and bought a Model 213 in 9mm. (love her!!!) Just wondering if there are any other owners out there and if so what can I expect from it?
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Any Norinco Model 213 owners out there?
- Thread starter Colonel Custer
- Start date
Sbowling79
New member
I bought one a few months ago. Loaded it, shot it, turned around and sold it to a guy standing next to me for half of what I paid for it.
Chinese junk if you ask me.
Chinese junk if you ask me.
Sbowling79
New member
Just noticed you're in Ky also. Hope it's not the one I had that you are looking at. I don't think he kept it long either.
Colonel Custer
New member
SBowling
Hope not lol but I've been looking for a tokarev to complete a collection and love the ballistic charts for 7.62x25. The 9mm will do until I get a barrel and a few mags. Where in KY did you sell yours? Bought mine in Muhlenberg County.
Hope not lol but I've been looking for a tokarev to complete a collection and love the ballistic charts for 7.62x25. The 9mm will do until I get a barrel and a few mags. Where in KY did you sell yours? Bought mine in Muhlenberg County.
Sbowling79
New member
The guy I sold it to lives in Richmond It was terrible. One round at a time was all it would fire then it would jam. Tried 3 mags and a few different ammo types but nothing would run in it. Sold it for $100. I won't own a gun that won't run right. I made a guy real happy at the range one day when my new gen4 glock 19 kept messing up.
triumph666
New member
mine worked perfect with multiple mags.......BUT wouldnt feed a single hollowpoint no matter what!!!! FMJ ONLY GUN
HawkeyeNRAlifer
New member
I have one that I paid about $110 new at a gun show back in the '90s. The most accurate nine I've ever owned, but then I've only had four or so. Only complaint I have is that when they fitted the gun with the safety, for importation I guess, they mis-marked the red and white dots so the when the selector is on red (ready to fire) it's actually on safe and vice-versa.
I did some work on a guys 213 and been trying to convince him to sell it to me ever sense. Its in good mechanical condition (now) but real rough cosmetic condition any ideas of what its worth? Its a reliable shooter but rust on slide and frame. Thank you
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Colonel Custer
New member
Guess I lucked into mine.
I hate having to shop online for anything. Guess I'm a dinosaur but I prefer to lay hands on a gun before I buy. We ran into theis 213 while looking for a "pink" gun for my wife. I promissed her she could have one after she passed her ccdw test. So now I look for pink guns lol. I've spent 3 months looking for a semi auto that could sling the 7.62x25 round down range and this is as good as I've found.
I hate having to shop online for anything. Guess I'm a dinosaur but I prefer to lay hands on a gun before I buy. We ran into theis 213 while looking for a "pink" gun for my wife. I promissed her she could have one after she passed her ccdw test. So now I look for pink guns lol. I've spent 3 months looking for a semi auto that could sling the 7.62x25 round down range and this is as good as I've found.
I have a lot of opinions on this pistol -- most good but a couple bad.
I bought mine on Black Friday just this last November, 2011. I didn't know I wanted one until I saw the price tag and the fact that it was chambered in 9x19. This was in my local gun store & range, a small shop that typically has "small shop" prices. I buy a lot of other stuff there (powder, primers, bullets, magazines, brass, dies, etc etc) and I've spent many hundreds of dollars over the last 15 years there, but had never bought a gun from them.
Until I saw the tag on this one -- marked $150. Before even getting my hands on it, I knew I was taking it home as long as the slide would pull back and the entire thing wasn't seized or had parts falling out of it. $161 out the door with the tax, came with only one 8-rd magazine.
Build quality: Impressive, IMO, for a mass-produced Chinese copy of a Russian design. The slide to frame fit and the smoothness of it when mounted on the slide is much more than you'd expect considering the source. The blued finish isn't a deep Colt blue from the 1950's, but it's more attractive than the black that Ruger puts on new Blackhawk revolvers, I'll tell you that. And the steel is heavy, solid and nicely finished. You can see where the vertical guide was pinned inside to "fit" the slimmer 9x19 magazines and the entire fire control unit pulls easily out of the frame with zero resistance when the pistol is field stripped. The simplicity is amazing, but it's TWICE as amazing considering how the pistol shoots.
And man, does it shoot. I've had it out to the range four times now for a total of 479 rounds. Though I did have a few feeding hiccups with my plated flat point loads, the bulk of my shooting (379, nearly 80% of the total) has been with my "go-to" steel plate load, a 125 grain lead round nose handload. With these -- this pistol has been flawless in feeding, firing, ejection and... wait for it... accuracy. By flawless, I mean without a single flaw to feed, fire or eject. The trigger is not match quality, but it's better than MANY pistols on the market, and I prefer it to any mushy, oddball tupperware pistol. The trigger is similar to the 1911 in design.
I snagged three extra mags at $20 each from CDNN and all of them run at 100% with my lead round nose load.
Complaints: The safety is perhaps the worst design I've ever encountered. It flips opposite the way it should-- it's nearly (or totally?) humanly NOT possible to take the pistol OFF safe with the single shooting hand. Your support hand must work the safety lever. Also, the lever has extremely sharp edges and if you don't adjust your hold around this lever, it will slice up your thumb.
The sights are very small and they don't do the accuracy of this pistol justice. The biggest problem that I have is that it's tough to find the tiny front sight immediately after taking a shot and prepping for the next one. The dark front sight gets lost in the top of the slide and I may add some color to it to help me pick it up with a little more speed.
The magazine release button is small and typically needs to be pushed in quite a way to eject the mag, and it could be a little better. Also, the slide is extremely difficult to rack with the hammer down -- it's as if the flat-base firing pin retainer is a strong part of the design to delay the unlocking of the slide. If you first thumb-cock the hammer, the slide is easy to draw back. If you do not thumb the hammer, you can draw the slide back, but it takes extreme effort. All of the T-213's do this as I've seen in others' pistols. It's more a design "feature" than a flaw.
Overall, I can say with complete and total honesty that while I would have walked away from this pistol if the price tag had said THREE HUNDRED on it -- I would not accept $300 for it right now. NO WAY. Shoots way, WAY too good to even consider.
I've been buying and shooting guns for a couple decades now and I look back fondly on many different purchases... and I have to roll my eyes at some others. And while this one was a decidedly low-buck deal and we are still talking about a mass produced Chinese pistol -- I can tell you without reservation that this is one of the best deals I've been a part of.
$150? Still can't believe what I got for $150.
I bought mine on Black Friday just this last November, 2011. I didn't know I wanted one until I saw the price tag and the fact that it was chambered in 9x19. This was in my local gun store & range, a small shop that typically has "small shop" prices. I buy a lot of other stuff there (powder, primers, bullets, magazines, brass, dies, etc etc) and I've spent many hundreds of dollars over the last 15 years there, but had never bought a gun from them.
Until I saw the tag on this one -- marked $150. Before even getting my hands on it, I knew I was taking it home as long as the slide would pull back and the entire thing wasn't seized or had parts falling out of it. $161 out the door with the tax, came with only one 8-rd magazine.
Build quality: Impressive, IMO, for a mass-produced Chinese copy of a Russian design. The slide to frame fit and the smoothness of it when mounted on the slide is much more than you'd expect considering the source. The blued finish isn't a deep Colt blue from the 1950's, but it's more attractive than the black that Ruger puts on new Blackhawk revolvers, I'll tell you that. And the steel is heavy, solid and nicely finished. You can see where the vertical guide was pinned inside to "fit" the slimmer 9x19 magazines and the entire fire control unit pulls easily out of the frame with zero resistance when the pistol is field stripped. The simplicity is amazing, but it's TWICE as amazing considering how the pistol shoots.
And man, does it shoot. I've had it out to the range four times now for a total of 479 rounds. Though I did have a few feeding hiccups with my plated flat point loads, the bulk of my shooting (379, nearly 80% of the total) has been with my "go-to" steel plate load, a 125 grain lead round nose handload. With these -- this pistol has been flawless in feeding, firing, ejection and... wait for it... accuracy. By flawless, I mean without a single flaw to feed, fire or eject. The trigger is not match quality, but it's better than MANY pistols on the market, and I prefer it to any mushy, oddball tupperware pistol. The trigger is similar to the 1911 in design.
I snagged three extra mags at $20 each from CDNN and all of them run at 100% with my lead round nose load.
Complaints: The safety is perhaps the worst design I've ever encountered. It flips opposite the way it should-- it's nearly (or totally?) humanly NOT possible to take the pistol OFF safe with the single shooting hand. Your support hand must work the safety lever. Also, the lever has extremely sharp edges and if you don't adjust your hold around this lever, it will slice up your thumb.
The sights are very small and they don't do the accuracy of this pistol justice. The biggest problem that I have is that it's tough to find the tiny front sight immediately after taking a shot and prepping for the next one. The dark front sight gets lost in the top of the slide and I may add some color to it to help me pick it up with a little more speed.
The magazine release button is small and typically needs to be pushed in quite a way to eject the mag, and it could be a little better. Also, the slide is extremely difficult to rack with the hammer down -- it's as if the flat-base firing pin retainer is a strong part of the design to delay the unlocking of the slide. If you first thumb-cock the hammer, the slide is easy to draw back. If you do not thumb the hammer, you can draw the slide back, but it takes extreme effort. All of the T-213's do this as I've seen in others' pistols. It's more a design "feature" than a flaw.
Overall, I can say with complete and total honesty that while I would have walked away from this pistol if the price tag had said THREE HUNDRED on it -- I would not accept $300 for it right now. NO WAY. Shoots way, WAY too good to even consider.
I've been buying and shooting guns for a couple decades now and I look back fondly on many different purchases... and I have to roll my eyes at some others. And while this one was a decidedly low-buck deal and we are still talking about a mass produced Chinese pistol -- I can tell you without reservation that this is one of the best deals I've been a part of.
$150? Still can't believe what I got for $150.
Got mine when we were trying to escape from the Clinton gun-ban. Price was VERY good as I recall. One of my favorite pistols. Ended up with three. The owner of the indoor range where I fired it said that he had seen them. Said also to be careful to reassemble it properly after cleaning. Told me that one owner forgot to replace the spring clip on the right-hand side. When he fired it, it fell apart in pieces!
willr
willr
I have one and it's been 100% for me. Never a jam and it's spooky accurate.
I recently got a BHP and own a Model 54 so the 213's been kinda idle. Were some of you serious when you said that you'd like to buy a good one? I'll sell it for $200 plus $30 shipping. If you want a great one, I have one.
I recently got a BHP and own a Model 54 so the 213's been kinda idle. Were some of you serious when you said that you'd like to buy a good one? I'll sell it for $200 plus $30 shipping. If you want a great one, I have one.