Like anything else, people sometimes get carried away with their hobbies, one of which is gun collecting. You can collect guns that are rare, historical, or unusual in design, or perhaps was owned by a celebrity like Elvis, or John Wayne.
About a year and a half ago, I wrote a column about the upcoming auction of a collector’s gun that was the personal property of Mormon pioneer Brigham Young. The 1849 Pocket Revolver was engraved and presented to Brigham Young when he was the Territorial Governor of Utah. It had been passed down from generation to generation of Young’s descendents until 2016 when it finally put up for public auction. Speculation at the time was that the gun might bring between $250,000 and $500,000. It was sold to an unidentified collector for $632,500, which is a rather princely sum.
During World War II numerous companies manufactured 45 caliber pistols for use by our military in the war. Among them were the usual gun companies like Colt and Ithaca, but they were also manufactured by the Union Switch Company and the Remington Rand typewriter company. The Holy Grail for gun collectors is probably a 45 ACP Model 1911-A1 manufactured by the Singer Sewing Machine Company. As I understand it. Singer only made 500 of the model 1911s in 45acp. They were apparently issued only to aviators and it seems that less than 200 survived the war. If you somehow found a Singer 45 today, it would bring a kings ransom at auction.
Now it looks like a new milestone in unique guns has been reached. In prehistoric times over what is now the Namibian desert of Southern Africa a meteor entered earth’s atmosphere and began to disintegrate, scattering pieces of meteorite over an area about 175 miles long and 60 miles wide. The Gibeon Meteorite was estimated to have weighed about 50,000 pounds and was first discovered by western “civilization’ in 1838. Chunks of the meteorite were regularly found and exported all over the world up until the early 1900s. In 2016 an American company, Cabot Guns of Cabot, Pennsylvania announced that it had purchased a 77 pound chunk of the Gibeon and had manufactured it into a matching pair of 1911 pistols that have serial numbers corresponding to the latitude and latitude of the Gibeon Debris Field. Metallurgical examination of the meteorite indicates that it is mostly iron with a smattering of nickel, cobalt and phosphorus. It is estimated 4.6 Billion years old, which is slightly older than the earth itself!
Cabot Guns is offering the matched pair of 1911 pistols for a paltry $4.5 million. They are referred to as The Big Bang guns. If I manage to hit six numbers out of six on the Power ball lottery, I may just take the folks at Cabot Guns up on their offer. Just don’t tell my wife.
Until Next Week,
Tight Lines
