A funny anecdote about the post war .22lr production was told to me by a former export manager of Mauser, who was there at the time.
During a meeting at the R&D department at Sulgen in Schramberg, not far from Oberndorf, the idea of production of a .22lr HSc was discussed. One of the marketing guys explained that it would be too expensive and technically impossible to produce a .22lr version of the HSc pistol. At that time, R&D manager Ludwig Vorgrimler reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a .22lr HSc and showed it to the group, with a large grin
The marketing guy must have had a point, because although plans for a .22lr version were present and a few prototypes were built, even manuals were printed, the .22lr HSc never made it onto the market.
Serial numbering would have followed the style already introduced on the .32 and .380 versions:
00.xxxx for the .32 ACP.
01.xxxx for the .380.
02.xxxx for the .22lr.
The pistol I bought has part of the slide stripped off. One theory was that it was stripped to reduce the mass / weight of the slide in order to improve recoil.
Another pistol was also offered at H-H, still a .32 ACP version with a normal, commercial serial number. It also had part of the slide stripped off. I looked up the serial number of that pistol in the Mauser production book and found that it was never released for sale and was proofed about 1 year later than all other pistols in the same serial range. This indicated to me that the .32 ACP with the stripped slide was also tied to R&D work by Mauser and most likely related to the work done on the creation of the .22lr version. A preliminary theory is that perhaps Mauser tested a uniform slide weight / mass that would work for .22lr / .32 / .380 versions. It would have made it cheaper to produce the .22 if the basic slide properties for all calibers were as close to each other as possible.
