POTD: The New Yoeb Ltd Pistol – Made in Ammerigan

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a Chinese pistol carrying the greatest slide marking I have ever seen. It reads MADE IN AMMERIGAN, NEW YOEB LTD. That is somebody in a Chinese workshop copying “Made in America, New York Ltd” letter by letter off a gun or an advertisement without reading a word of English. Warlord era China ran on that sort of thing. Between 1911 and 1949 the country was carved up between competing armies, all of them needed guns, and the shops feeding them copied whatever came through the door, markings included.

What came through the door here was Spanish. The pistol borrows from the Ruby and from Browning’s FN designs, and the stretched grip with its twelve round single stack magazine points straight at the Ruby Plus Ultra. There is a nice loop in that. Gabilondo built the Plus Ultra with its long magazine in the 1920s because buyers in China wanted more rounds, and a good deal of that production is said to have gone east. So this is a Chinese copy of a Spanish pistol that Spain built for China in the first place.

Ian McCollum gave this exact gun a two page spread in Pistols of the Warlords, which is where I would point anybody who wants to fall down this hole properly.

Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!

“Well-Documented Chinese ‘New Yoeb Ltd’ Semi-Automatic Pistol.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/4097/1347/welldocumented-chinese-new-yoeb-ltd-semiautomatic-pistol. Accessed 14 Sept. 2026.

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