Old West Firearms Collectors

Comment by Mike Wood on August 25, 2011 at 6:52pm

How many have seen the actual box from an 1877 Colt?  Black Powder Colt Double Action .41 Cal. "Central Fire" long or short. 

Comment by Mike Wood on August 25, 2011 at 6:59pm

A single box of 50 mint condition "Calibre .32 Long" Central Fire Cartridges - Made Expressly For Colt's Revolver by the United States Cartridge Company, Lowell, Mass.

Only Known Box for Model 1877

Comment by patrick mark pazen on August 27, 2011 at 3:14pm

Think i'll go buy a lottery ticket, these guns have me drulling. Would love to have a rifle or pistol from The LIttle Bighorn, A little piece of that history is quite interesting, I would put them in a museum on display.

Comment by Mike Wood on August 27, 2011 at 7:01pm

As I attended the Dallas Arms Collectors Assn; August Gun Show which featured the NRA National Gun Collectors' Display, I met one of the foremost authorities on the Winchester Rifle, and just as important, it's predecessor, Volcanic Firearms. Stephen Rutter has been invited to join us at the True West Historical Society's Group, and more specifically to join us at our Old West Firearms Collectors Group.  Hopefully we will see a Blog Post or two in the next few weeks!

Comment by Mike Wood on August 28, 2011 at 8:56pm

Read about Doc Holliday's .41 Cal Double Derringer.  

This interesting little pocket gun has inspired my antique firearms collecting from the the time I was young.  My first cap gun was an engraved toy / model 95 after Remington's design. Besides Doc's story, this little pistol was mentioned by John Wayne in the film "Big Jake" in which he give's his Derringer "Betsy" to his Grandson little Jake to protect against kidnappers. While Remington supposedly veered away from the double R in Derringer, the below photo of a matched weapon in it's box tells a different story!

Comment by C. F. 'Charley' Eckhardt on August 29, 2011 at 2:41pm

'Big Jake' was about the only time in history Hollywood actually represented the sound one of these things make when fired.  It was just a 'sput.'  That's what a .41 rimfire actually sounds like.  The charge is 7 grains of 3f.  I knew I guy who had an original & some of that Dynamit-Nobel ammo that came out in the '60s.  Some guy with more money than sense paid for DN to manufacture 1M rounds of the stuff.

Comment by C. F. 'Charley' Eckhardt on August 29, 2011 at 6:57pm

On gun fakes--even the experts can be fooled!  Turner Kirkland, who was the expert of experts, particularly on Mississippi derringers, once bought--for a tidy sum--what he had every reason to believe was one of the rarer Mississippi derringers.  It was in great shape, too.  Turner found out why it was in such great shape when he backed out a screw.  The screw had metric threads!  Not just 20th cent, but most likely an Italian product that had been extensively altered.

Comment by Mike Wood on August 31, 2011 at 8:03pm

Fun to watch!  2009 Gun Show in Pennsylvania.... Great video of all sorts of antique firearms..

 

Comment by Mike Wood on August 31, 2011 at 8:45pm

H&R Arms: "The American" Double Action Revolver

Reprinted from the Blog "mooseintheyard.com"  Pristine in the Box, many exist, but not in this condition!

 

"My friend Dana let me take a look at his mother's pistol, which she received from her dad, IIRC.

It's an H&R Arms "The American" double-action six-shot revolver with a 4.5-inch barrel, chambered for the .32 S&W center-fire round (loaded to black powder pressures, I understand). I couldn't get a picture of the bore, given the circumstances, but the rifling appeared to be a very slow twist - perhaps one turn in 12 inches.

There were six rounds in the box when she first showed it to him, so he and she fired those six rounds. The total number of rounds known to be fired through it now totals six. It's unknown whether it had been fired prior to her father's purchase of the pistol, but I could find no visible signs of wear or usage. The bluing is 100%, with no scratches of any kind. The bore looked so pristine that I'd have believed it was never fired, if Dana hadn't said he had.

From the research he's done, it seems the pistol is not particularly rare; they were manufactured in the hundreds of thousands. It's a first model, third variation, which was manufactured between 1898 and 1904, meaning the pistol is between 106 and 112 years old.

The neatest thing (to me) is that it's in the original box and waxed-paper wrapper. It was nice to handle that pistol, and to consider the times in which it was made ... and all that has transpired since."

Comment by Mike Wood on August 31, 2011 at 9:07pm

Delete Comment Collectors... Here is the link to the above story but it brought to mind the history of these early weapons. One of my first Antique Firearm aquisitions was a Forehand & Wadsworth Nickle .32 Cal Revolver w/ Ivory Grips which I still have to this day.  These old pistols became popular just before the turn of the century, just as the older heavier black powder firearms were being phased out for newer, sleeker models. Many of these pistols were sold by catalog, such as the old "Montgomery Ward & Co." as well as being sold in local hardware or general merchandise stores. I am giving these small frame revolvers their due credit for the short time they were popular from the 1880's thru the Spanish American War, and into the early 1900's before the advent of the semi-auto 1911A1. 

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