Engraved Walther PDP: The Boston Tea Party in Steel

What is this engraved Walther PDP?

The PDP, for Performance Duty Pistol, is Walther’s striker-fired 9mm, introduced in 2021 to replace the PPQ and described by Walther as its new flagship handgun. Most PDPs have polymer frames; in December 2023 Walther released the PDP Match and the PDP Match Steel Frame. Ours has a steel frame, which is what lets the engraving run down the frame as well as the slide.

MM stands for Meister Manufaktur, Walther’s custom shop. It works inside Walther’s factory in Ulm, makes custom pieces in consultation with customers, and first showed itself at the IWA show in 2015. The barrel markings, visible through the ejection port, read 9mm x19, MM01012, CIP, N and DE 2024. PDP is marked on the rear of the slide, and MM01012 appears again on the rear of the frame.

The engraving is by Jürgen Göser, a German master engraver, and it is done by hand. The figures stand in low relief, with the steel around them cut back, while the water and the ships’ planking are line-cut.

The night of December 16, 1773

The Tea Act of 1773 let the East India Company ship its tea straight to the colonies, while the Townshend duty on tea stayed in place. Colonists who saw that duty as taxation without representation refused to let the tea be landed in Boston. Three tea ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver, sat in Boston Harbor. On the evening of December 16, at about 6 or 7 o’clock, a large group of men, armed with axes and some in Mohawk disguise, went to the wharf and boarded the three ships. Over about three hours they dumped every chest of tea into the water: 342 chests by the count most often given, while the East India Company’s invoice to Parliament lists 340 chests, 92,616 pounds of tea.

Hiding their faces mattered, because the protest was illegal. Historians also read the Mohawk costume as a symbolic choice, a way for the Sons of Liberty to identify with America rather than with their status as British subjects. Only some of the men wore it.

The left side: the wharf, the boats and the ships

On the left side of the slide the crowd on the wharf cheers in tricorn hats. In the boat, a crew in feathered disguises raise their hatchets. Behind them stand the ships full of tea, and up on deck the chests go over the side. Walther’s name rides on a ribbon in the middle of the scene.

At the very back of the left side, in the corner, stands a man with a lantern. It all happened after dark.

The right side: the deck and the waterfront

The right side shows more men in feathers on deck, passing the chests along, and behind the ships a crowd lining the waterfront, the buildings of the town, and a ship flying a Union flag. At the rear corner, a feathered man tips a chest over the side.

The harbor continues onto both sides of the steel frame, with chests floating in the water all the way along it.

On top of the slide, the tea itself

On top of the slide, the chests are split open and the tea pours straight into the sea. Toward the front, ships and small boats sit in the harbor. The men came for the tea and took care to leave the ships and the rest of their cargo alone.

Engraved magazine baseplates

Both magazine baseplates are engraved too. Each shows a man with a feather in his hair handling a tea chest; the chest on the left is clearly marked TEA.

From the Tea Party to independence

Sixteen months later, on April 19, 1775, the shooting started at Lexington and Concord. On July 4, 1776, less than three years after the Tea Party, America declared its independence. 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Specifications

Item	Walther PDP, Boston Tea Party
Maker	Walther, Ulm, Germany
Frame	Steel
Workshop	Meister Manufaktur
Serial	MM01012
Cartridge	9×19mm
Engraver	Jürgen Göser, by hand
Theme	The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773
Engraved surfaces	Both sides and top of the slide, frame, both magazine baseplates

Collecting engraved modern pistols

With this piece, we start with the scenes and how they carry on from one surface to the next. The engraving draws on familiar elements of the event: the Mohawk disguises, three ships, the chests on deck and in the water, the darkness. It is a modern artistic retelling, not a reconstruction; the boats on the left side, for example, are the engraver’s telling, while the written accounts have the men boarding the ships from the wharf. For how we describe the condition of any piece, see how we grade firearm condition.

On the floor at OSA

The engraved PDP in these photos is part of the Old Steel Arsenal collection. Other modern 9mm and commemorative pieces in our case:

• HK VP9L with Burris FastFire 3: another German striker-fired 9mm, in its long-slide version.
• Glock 17 Gen6 with Trijicon RMR: another striker-fired 9mm duty pistol.
• Kimber 45th Anniversary 1911 .45 ACP: a commemorative edition 1911.
• Nighthawk Custom Lady Hawk 1911 9mm: a custom-shop 1911.

The grid below updates by itself as pieces come and go.

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General information for collectors, not legal advice. Historical details come from the sources below. The description of the engraving is from our own photographs of the pistol; the Meister Manufaktur and engraver attribution is from our own record of this pistol, and we found no engraver’s signature on it.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Boston Tea Party” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party (December 16, 1773, Tea Act, Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, 6 or 7 o’clock, men with axes, Mohawk disguises and how they are interpreted, Townshend duty left in place, three hours, 340 or 342 chests, invoice of 340 chests and 92,616 pounds)
• Wikipedia, “Walther PDP” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_PDP (Performance Duty Pistol, 2021, PPQ replacement, striker fired, 9×19mm, flagship, PDP Match and PDP Match Steel Frame, December 2023)
• all4shooters, “Visit to the Walther Master Manufactory” — https://www.all4shooters.com/en/shooting/culture/visit-to-the-walther-master-manufactory-with-video/ (Meister Manufaktur in Walther’s Ulm factory, custom pieces, first shown at IWA 2015)
• Wikipedia, “United States Declaration of Independence” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence (July 4, 1776)
• Wikipedia, “Battles of Lexington and Concord” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Concord (April 19, 1775)