The Zastava P10 is a Yugoslavian (or Serbian?) made pistol. After many other countries stopped making the Tokarevs, Serbia kept making them: making the long grip Zastava M57, and other variants including this beast. The P10 is a 10mm Tokarev, made in the 90’s (this one’s from 1996) using the same grip length as the M57. In Canada, these are the cheapest 10mm handguns you can currently buy. Wolverine Supplies asked if I wanted to try one out and sent me this one as a loaner. If you like what you see in this review, you can buy one here.
The P10 varies in only a few ways compared with a stock M57:
- 3 dot sights rather than the crappy blade/notch setup on most Tokarevs
- Ergonomic wood grips
- Comes with 2 mags and a basic cleaning brush in the box
- Mags have a plastic baseplate that can be used to strip the mag out and they hold 8 rounds of 10mm
- Chambered in 10mm auto instead of 7.62x25TT
- It has a cut trigger that looks like a hinged one, but it’s still the same sliding trigger as all Toks have
Shooting the Zastava P10
Shooting the P10 is much nicer than on a standard Tokarev. The grips on a standard Tokarev are tiny and don’t offer much control, while these grips are quite large and were MUCH more ergonomic than they looked like in the pictures. That said, it is possible to grip the gun too high and get slide bite so watch your grip.
The 3 dot sights were also somewhat easier to use than the typical crappy Tokarev flair. If I were to keep this pistol, I’d probably black out the rear dots.
The first time I had this pistol out, I ran into an interesting situation: the slide lever is retained by a retaining slide. That retaining slide would pop off from recoil, leaving the slide stop loose and ready to fall out. That lead to this interesting clip:
I bent the clip in a bit with some pliers and it worked fine after that.
Compatibility with M57 Tokarev
I thought I’d check compatibility between this pistol and a stock 7.62x25mm Tokarev in case there were some interesting use cases.
Mags are slightly different. If you had a dremel, you could make an M57 mag work for this pistol, but not the other way around because the feed lips are a bit wider on the 10mm than on the 7.62×25. Interestingly, the M57 mags drop free out of my P10 but the P10 mags do not.
- Slides can’t be swapped between the guns
- Barrel bushings are different
- Recoil springs look the same
- Trigger packs vary a bit
Long story short, you’re not going to be able to run some unholy 10mm/7.62×25 combo without just buying 2 guns
Why would you want one of these?
A “10mm Tokarev” has some sort of allure to it all on its own. It’s a weird juxtaposition of old tech and 90’s hotness cartridge, old school wood grips and modern-ish 3 dot sights. If you just wanted a cheap 10mm auto, it’s the cheapest. Just remember to pick your brass and reload!
