How to ID New Style P99 40 S&W Full Size Magazines?

Just get a current production mag....you'll be good to go.

I went to Walther Arms web site, found the Walther part number.

Walther Arms 2796520 P99 40S&W 12rd Black Finish

I used Google to search for Walther 2796520. Got some links. But what I was really looking for was the UPC code. Clicked on a couple of links and found the mag with associated UPC code 723364200540.

Copied and pasted the UPC code into Google. What I'm looking for is the gun.deals link....found it. See below. Click on the link. Happy shopping.

https://gun.deals/search/apachesolr_search/723364200540?upc_only=1

Don't pay any attention to the pictures you see on the various sites on the web, as many don't know a magazine from a clip, and they display a picture of the wrong magazine. You need to pay attention to the part number and or UPC code....NOT the pictures.

Are you buying for a friend, or yourself? Personally, if I were buying a magazine for a friend I would want that gift to be fully functional and reliable. Oldfart's suggestion to buy a current production mag is the best advice.


I've never heard of two types of mags for the P99 .40, much less one with "issues" and another one that doesn't have them, and I don't think that dimples are going to show you anything. I have four magazines. The follower is blue. The metal is shiny black, and as you hold the magazine away from you (like in a pistol), the left side has the Mec-Gar logo at the base, with two witness holes at the 8 and 12 round mark. On the right, it has two additional witness holes at the 5 and 10 round points, with the Walther logo and Cal .40. The base plate has the Walther logo with a P99, too. "Made in Italy" shows on the front side of the mag.


A good friend deserves more than you digging through boxes of old pistol magazines or a bunch of questionable online sales listings with you holding a picture doing the comparison thing. Buy a production mag and be done with it.


Don

I've never heard of two types of mags for the P99 .40, much less one with "issues" and another one that doesn't have them, and I don't think that dimples are going to show you anything.

Click to expand...

The early P99 .40 mags did have issues. The easiest way to tell if you have an early mag is the color of the follower.

The original P99 .40 mags with the orange follower had issues where the baseplate could break pretty easily, and have the spring, follower, and all remaining rounds in the mag fall out of the bottom of the pistol while the mag body was still latched onto the frame of the pistol.

Mec-Gar revised the magazine and changed the color of the follower to dark blue to differentiate the mag from the previous design.

Then, it was found that the newer mag also had an issue where the rounds in the magazine could shift under recoil, and the bullet nose could hit the tab on the slide lock lever as it was moving up the mag body, and cause the slide to lock back while there were still rounds in the mag.

Mec-Gar revised the magazine design again, and this time they changed the color of the follower to light blue. These light blue mags, and all mags made afterwards seemed to function very well. I haven't heard of a mag issue with the .40 mags since.

Mec-Gar's change to the light blue mag design happened in the early 2000's, so I'm not surprised if people never heard of these issues, but the early .40 mags did have issues. Back then, Walther would replace any older mags that were sent in, to the newer design.

I don't have any pictures, and I sold my .40 P99 more than a decade ago, but it should be very rare to find one of the earlier "orange follower" or "dark blue follower" mags for the P99. Any P99 .40 mags that do not have an orange or dark blue follower, should be good to go.