Old guns used to be affordable, but man, that’s not the case now. Lots of cool old guns skyrocketed in price. Owning old guns isn’t as affordable as it used to be, but I want to catalog some of the more affordable old guns. I previously covered the S&W M1903; today, we are moving to automatics with the Astra 600. Spanish pistols are often underrated, and guns from Astra and Star are sturdy, well-made, and often affordable.
The Astra 600 is technically a World War II pistol, but only a few saw service in World War II. Most Astra 600s are affordable, but if you have one proof marked and issued, the cost rises substantially. Most of the Astra 600s are affordable, and most of the issued ones are not. The Astra 600 series isn’t commonly found outside of rinky dink gunshops, but when located, I paid a mere 300 dollars for my Astra 600.
The Astra 600 – An Odd History
The Spanish might have been ‘neutral’ in World War II, but they were famously friendly with the Nazis. The Spanish were happy to produce and sell guns to the Nazis, and that’s how the Astra 600 came to be. The Astra 600 is an evolution of the Astra 400. It’s shortened a bit, and instead of chambering the 9mm Largo, it was rechambered to the German-approved 9mm Parabellum.
The Germans placed an order in 1943, and the Spanish produced them and sent a batch for testing the same year. The Astra 600 was approved, and it was known as the 600/43. The Germans ordered 50,000 of the guns, and 10,450 were delivered. The supply lines between Spain and France were gone once the Germans were shaken off the French border.
The Astra 600s that were produced went into storage. Some were sold to countries like Turkey, Portugal, Chile, and Costa Rica. In 1951, the Spanish could sell the remaining pistols to West Germany. They stayed there until the 1960s when Interarms bought them all and exported the guns to the United States.
This creates the difference between the Nazi-issued models, which fetch a much higher price than the other non-Nazi-issued guns.
What’s an Astra 600 – Diving Inside
The Astra 600 looks neat. It’s a weird shape with a circular design, a bit like a space gun. The Astra 600 is, oddly enough, a fairly simple and old-school gun. It uses a direct blowback system that does it no favors. The Astra 600’s simple blowback system uses a super stiff spring to help keep the breech closed until the projectile leaves the barrel.
While the gun appears to be a European-style striker-fired design, in reality, they hid a hammer in there. It’s a single-action design. The gun uses a simple 8-round box magazine of a single-stack design. It also comes with very simple sights and controls.
The magazine release sits on the left side of the grip and near the bottom of the magazine. It’s easy to use for a bottom-mounted release. It naturally encourages you to retain the magazine upon reloading, and a pinch method allows you to pull the mag from the gun.
In the 1940s, they were big fans of varied safety devices. The Astra 600 has not one, not two, but three safety devices. We have a manual safety system, which is easy to use. We also have a magazine release.
Lord forbid you train shooters to clear the chamber when they remove the magazine. Finally, we have a grip safety. Astra designed the safety to rotate from safe to fire as the slide cycles. I’m sure the idea is that the gun is carried with an empty chamber, and when you rack the slide, it’s time to fight.
To The Range
Oh boy, aren’t straight blowback pistols fun? The bigger the caliber, the snappier they get, and the Astra 600 is one snappy beast. Firing 9mm through a direct blowback gun with nothing more than a stiff recoil spring isn’t going to produce a soft shooting gun. The Astra 600 doesn’t beat you up, but it’s snappy enough.
The single-action trigger isn’t the best. It’s certainly no M1911, and it’s not even a Hi-Power. It’s stiff and surprisingly long for a single-action-only trigger. The pistol grip is a straightish design that looks awkward but feels fairly nice. It feels like I should blade my body, fully extend my right arm, and leave my left arm out of the equation.
The Astra 600 delivers surprisingly decent accuracy. The sights are tiny, but if you can see them enough to use them, the gun can be a real tack driver. It has a fixed barrel, which helps with accuracy but likely not enough to matter. It seems like the design just aids in accurate shooting.
The little gun is reliable, and I only ran some tame 115-grain FMJs through it. I won’t try to use high-powered stuff through an older gun. It just seems sacrilege to risk breaking the gun to shoot hot stuff. Instead, I keep it to the basic, soft stuff and it has no problems there.
Affordable, Old, and Cool
The Astra 600 provides shooters with an affordable old gun that still shoots an affordable cartridge. It’s certainly an interesting-looking gun, and it has some odd quirks, but it’s fun to shoot and a great conversation starter. The Astra 60 is a kind of mil-surp gun in a cheap and easy-to-find caliber.
