Colt Delta Elite First Edition Stainless

[lonegunman]

Need info on the Colt Delta Elite First Edition Stainless 10mm...

It is marked first edition on slide. Has smooth wood grips, almost black in color, with the colt emblem on them. Three dot sights, the standard Colt type. Grip Safety is not beavertailed. Front Strap is grooved not checkered. Commander style hammer.

It looks pretty unused, at least 98% condition, and does not appear to have been modified since it left Colt's factory.

Dealer was asking $1095. Seems high to me by about $200 at least, but I am not as up on Delta Elites as other 1911's.

What is your opinion of this gun, and the price?

 

[jtduncan]

I've handled a dozen and had a couple of shooting sessions with friends' CDE. Not impressed. The 1911 platform just was not designed to really handle that kind of heavy duty round on a consistent basis.

Get a Glock, Witness, Megastar, or SW 610 revolver.

All of the CDEs I touched rattled like tin cans and with a powerful round like 10mm, you want tight tolerances to protect your butt if the case fails or squibs on you.

No thanks.

 

[CastleBravo]

Wrong, wrong, wrong...

Delta Elites are great. The stories about them being fragile are greatly exaggerated by people who don't know better. The problem with them is the stock recoil setup; spend $30 to replace it with a Wolff 24lb spring and a steel FLGR and it holds up like a champ.

If that is the actual Colt limited-production "first edition" gun then $1000+ is par for the course. However, a stock blue DE is more like $550, with mark-ups for stainless and Gold Cup versions.

Oh yeah, I AM biased as all get-out because I am a happy Delta Elite owner. Even before I sent it off to BCP it was a tight, accurate and reliable handgun. All it ever NEEDED was Wolff XP mag springs in the stock mags (after all they were about 10 years old...) and the better recoil setup. That's about $40 total. Everything else I did later was because, well, it's cool.

I have a Glock 20C and used to have an EAA Witness, and both are excellent and cheaper than a Delta Elite. The aren't "better" though, the Witness was less accurate and the Glock is thick as a bar of soap and has an inferior trigger.

 

[BigG]

I would think the grips are a replacement since all the original Deltas I've seen had the triangle logo, not the Colt emblem. YMMV