Beretta has spent its 500th anniversary year producing a string of one-of-a-kind pieces, and the latest takes the company’s best-known pistol somewhere it has been only once before. Built by the PB Selection Custom Shop in Gardone Val Trompia, Italy, the 92FS Diamond carries 14½ carats of diamonds and 335 grams (roughly 11.8 ounces) of 18-karat gold on the same basic design that served U.S. forces as the M9 for more than three decades.
Strictly speaking, it’s a sequel. In 2010, Beretta built the original 92 Diamond, a one-off encrusted with 1,193 stones totaling 90 carats. That gun sits in the Beretta Private Collection, where Carlo Gussalli Beretta, PB Selection business development manager, says it “always attracts a lot of interest from visitors.”
On paper, the new version looks like a step backward. It uses a fraction of the stones and about a sixth of the carat weight. That was the point, according to Head of Design Marco Martelli.
“Simply applying diamonds to a 92 was not what we were looking for. That had already been done with the old 92 Diamond,” Martelli said. “This time, the intention was to develop an all-round aesthetic inspired by the way light reflects off precious gems. So how could we evoke the idea of diamonds in the design of the pistol without distorting the iconic lines of the 92?”
His team’s answer was to cut the pistol itself like a stone. Bevels and flat facets run across the frame, slide, hammer, trigger guard and magazine base pad, so the gun reads as faceted before a single diamond enters the picture. Slide serrations get the most elaborate treatment. Each one grows out of a geometric pattern milled into the slide flats, starting as a truncated pyramid and sharpening into a more pronounced ridge as it goes, which keeps the serrations doing their actual job of giving the shooter something to grab.
Only then do the stones arrive. Both grip panels are machined from solid white gold and hand-set, one stone at a time, with 144 natural diamonds apiece. Four more white-gold inserts in the frame and slide hold triangle-cut diamonds set flush with the surrounding steel. Two small round diamonds sit in the rear sight, making this arguably the most expensive sight picture ever put on a 92.
Getting precious metal to live inside a working pistol turned out to be the hard part. Beretta says the project demanded engineering validation on top of the design work, since the whole idea hinged on the 92 still behaving like a 92.
“A huge design challenge was developing the inserts guaranteeing on one hand the robustness of the gun and on the other the possibility to disassemble the inserts for future maintenance,” Emanuele Cecchel, PB Selection platform manager said. “The lines created required exploring new machining technologies from other industries, such as watchmaking.”
Once machined, every component went through hand-fitting and mirror polishing by the Custom Shop’s gunsmiths. A small 500 Year logo is engraved on the slide, and a gold accent along the top of the slide nods to the forge of Bartolomeo Beretta, whose 1526 barrel order from the Venetian Arsenal marks the company’s founding. Pietro Beretta, the 20th-century patriarch who turned the family business into a modern manufacturer, gets his signature engraved along the barrel, with his PB shield carved into the diamond-set grips.
Even the box got the treatment. The pistol ships in a forged aluminum case styled after a jeweler’s safe, with a deep blue French-fitted interior handmade by the PB Selection gun case atelier.
It’s a fitting way to mark five centuries of Beretta craftsmanship: a pistol that honors the enduring 92 design while showing just how far the company’s artisans can take it. Learn more at pietroberetta.com.
