POTD: Walther TP – Ulm’s Open-Top Pocket Pistol

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a small postwar Walther that gets overlooked next to its bigger siblings. This is a Walther TP in 6.35mm (25 ACP), and this one is dated 1968.

A little background on why a Walther pocket pistol from the ’60s comes out of Ulm and not Zella-Mehlis. Zella-Mehlis landed in the Soviet zone after the war, so Walther started over in Ulm, in West Germany, and even then it had to wait out several years while the Allies kept German companies from building guns. Before all that, Walther had covered the vest pocket market with the Model 8 and the tiny striker-fired Model 9, which sold around 200,000 by 1945.

TP stands for Taschenpistole, or pocket pistol. It was made from 1961 to 1971 in 22 LR and 25 ACP, and the slide is open on top over the barrel. In 1968 Walther rolled out the TPH, which closed in the top of the slide and cut a normal ejection port. The H stands for Hahn, German for hammer. The TPH outlived the TP by decades and was even built in the U.S. by Interarms, so it’s no surprise the TP is the harder one to find today.

This example comes from 1968, the very year the two overlapped at the Ulm factory. In my book, the TP is the missing link between Walther’s prewar vest pocket guns and the TPH that most people know.

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!

“Scarce Walther Model TP Semi-Automatic Pistol.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/5034/843/scarce-walther-model-tp-semiautomatic-pistol. Accessed 29 Sept. 2026.

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