Korth Ratzeburg Diana Gold-Inlaid Factory Engraved

Look at the gold figure on the left side of this Korth frame. It's Diana, the huntress, riding a stag with a spear in hand, set against deeply cut oak leaves that flow back from the cylinder window. That single panel tells you this isn't a standard Korth. It's a hunting-themed presentation gun built during the Ratzeburg years, when the West German shop was turning out revolvers a few at a time and finishing each one by hand.

The barrel address reads Made in W. Germany, Waffenfabrik Korth, Ratzeburg/Lbg., so there's no mistaking the period. The slab-side barrel carries .357 Magnum picked out in gold lettering, framed by oak-leaf scrollwork that runs gold on the upper register and bright-cut steel below. That same oak motif wraps the cylinder flutes in alternating gold bands, and the Korth medallion sits inside a gilded laurel wreath on the right of the frame. The bluing underneath is deep and glassy, the kind of polish Korth was known for before anyone else tried to copy it.

The action is the six-shot Korth double-action design with the adjustable target rear sight and a ramp front. Up top you get the roller-bearing trigger and the hand-fitted lockup that made these guns the benchmark among European revolvers. The grips are checkered walnut in a target profile, contoured to fill the hand, and inset with a gold MG monogram medallion on the right panel. The high edges show light handling, and there's faint freckling near the muzzle crown.

It comes in its fitted Korth case, the lid wearing a Schützenkompanie Sangerhausen shooting-club crest beside the factory logo. For a collector chasing Ratzeburg-era Korth work with full hunting engraving and gold, this is the kind of gun that rarely surfaces twice in the same decade.