Survival of Original Guns

[RedFeather]

The biggest obstacle here, when attempting to calculate the survival rate, is that there is no starting number for the vast majority of guns outside of martial arms where there may be contract numbers. Take the Colt revolver examples, above. There are factory production records which give a total from which to work. For early guns, there are no such numbers. You end up estimating a survival rate for an estimated number of guns. How, then, do you estimate your starting point? Ratio of guns to population, costs of guns to relative mean incomes, gun type/quality by class populations, etc? How precise can you get? Not very.

 

[btech]

There are some makes of antique guns that still have part or most of their original production records surviving...i.e. Marlin, LC Smith, Winchester, Colt, Savage. These companies and/or the museums that house these records often provide research services as well as providing factory letters. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Remington as they do not have any accessible records. So you can't even get factory verification. Totally at the mercy of an appraiser.

 

[Va.Manuf.06]

What are the odds of 3 different auction houses having an auction every month with a dozen "real" revolvers each time?? Pretty slim. And if originals aren't hard to find, why is it impossible to get any form of paperwork on them? Even the owners have never had the gun checked. If you owned one, wouldn't you have it appraised even for insurance purposes?

ALW and Coot have more than adequately answered your question. There are literally hundreds of antique percussion revolvers for sale at any given time; gunshows, websites run by reliable sellers who specialize in antique arms, storefronts, flea markets, and on and on. I won't say more since it is technically off topic but in 40 years of buying and selling antique arms I have never felt the need for written evaluation of an antique arm, I rely on my research and experience.

 

[faste350]

I'm sure you know this, but it's my understanding that the early Remington Company was more of a barrel maker than a true arms maker.
The commemorative 1816 Remington in reality represented the type of rifle a 1816 gunsmith would have made from a Remington barrel.

Does this fact diminish the significance of your rifle? Absolutely not.

yes, i should have stated that. i didn't research as to when they started making actual guns, so they were strickly in the barrel business for many years. most where only the barrel, leaving the gunsmith to do the rifling. they sold and shipped barrels everywhere.