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Wrong Musket IDs at shows etc.

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pargent

62 Cal.
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Some other topics and posts have promted me to start this topic, this is for us to chime in with wrong lableing on guns, blatent missrepresentation of muskets at shows and auctions etc. this is help members keep their wits about them when looking at shows and auctions and on line.
1. a battered French musket ( circa 1790's )listed as a First Fleet Bess.{ should be Sea Service or Marine PATTERN } 2.in a pile of very obviously recent muskets knocked up with period parts and listed as Indian Mutiny Muskets Ifound a late pattern 1809 bess with Indian arsenal conversion to percusion
3 . a suposed Walker with company marks for only $20k in near mint con dition.
 
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There are those who do not always know what they are selling (including some big names in the dealer world) either from a failure to carefully examine the item in question or due to only a cursory knowledge of less frequently encountered pieces. No one is an expert on everything. And, sadly, there are those who like to sell to customers who do not know what they are buying. :(
 
Yes I agree but we all need something to set that bell ringing in our head . What I see here may never apear in the US and vice versa .Hence the topic .
 
The more narrow the field of the expert, the more the expert thinks they are expert in all things, paraphrased from the character "Lazarus Long", by the author William Heinlein.

I have been to many auctions of firearms as well as other collectable items when I used to help a friend with her antique business. It was amazing to see folks who were in some cases well respected antique experts and dealers miss some obvious repros. At one auction I saw a tomahawk that cost $20 from Track go for $100, and it had the "J3" maker's mark (just like the one I use at events). I've seen reproduction flintlock rifles sold as War of 1812 rifles or from the AWI, when you could look at the muzzles and see the barrels were modern, machine made. Heck I have heard the story that of all places, the Smithsonian had on display as an original piece from the 1700's, a felling axe..., until the actual smith who made it took his kids to the museum, saw it, mentioned to one of the staff that he'd made it and showed them what his maker's mark looked like..., it was removed from the display a short time later.

LD
 
Hershel House and some buddies were at a museum out west looking at the gun collection. One that stood out was a gun that had the notice under it. "H House unknown builder". His buddies said why we know that guy, he's right here!

Many Klatch
 
Its not confined to meusems.InGreat Battles of history by gen Graham he says, when writing about Saratoga,that American rifles could shoot twice as fast as the brown bess. In George Whasingtons War, I dont recall the writer but was a good fast history of the revolution, states that musket balls fell harmlessly to the ground after 80 yards.In Saint Louis History muesem they had when I was last there, a Hawkin marked as a military musket and a musket marked as a Hawkin
 
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30 years ago I was at the Alamo. I was told by a docent that the Mexican Army wasn't accurate with the Brown Bess because if they held the gun to their shoulder when they shot it, it would break their collar bones.

Many Klatch
 
Oh, yeh. That misidentified stuff is all over the place. A local antique shop has a gun (I use the term loosley) that is labeled as an original Brown Bess. Not even close. Near as I can tell it is a cobbled together monstrosity with mostly CW rifled musket parts and others not identifiable. It is a sorta percussion. I tried politely informing the store owner but he smiled and said he "knew" it was an original Brown Bess. BTW, the price asked would be appropriate for a real original BB. :doh:
 
My favorite story was a guy trying to sell me a flint pistol at a gun show. It was an old CVA kit and it looked like it was a high school project. The back sight was missing and so was the jaw screw and the upper jaw. He said a friend of his was a scuba diver and found it on a wrecked sunken Spanish gallion. It had to be a true story it had made in Spain on the barrel written in English and use black powder only stamped in the barrel in English. Seems the ships name was the Jukar from Spain. That was 25 years ago and I am still laughing.
 
:rotf: it happens some of these antique dealers are either rouges or dumb as
 
I need to go back to a small local history museum with some documentation to show them that the CW breech loading carbine they have labeled something like "C Harps" is NOT an unusual Southern copy of a Northern gun, rather it is a real C Sharps with worn stampings!
 
I caught an episode of "Lords of War" the other night---it's a program about a militaria auction house---and a guy brought in a nice cased set of dueling pistols. The "expert" ID'd them as 1700s vintage. Now I could be wrong, but when they showed a close-up of the barrels, I'm pretty sure I saw British post-1813 proofs (Crown, Crossed scepters over V, and crown, crossed scepters with B P C).

The auction house advertised them as 1700s vintage, if I remember they went for $7000+. The kicker is they had to go out and fire them to "make sure they worked" --as if they couldn't tell a flintlock would work just by working the lock and checking the barrel. Said nobody would buy them if they didn't work :shocked2:

Needless to say, I was less than impressed, I won't make an effort to watch that program again.

Rod
 
fraungie said:
My favorite story was a guy trying to sell me a flint pistol at a gun show. It was an old CVA kit and it looked like it was a high school project. The back sight was missing and so was the jaw screw and the upper jaw. He said a friend of his was a scuba diver and found it on a wrecked sunken Spanish gallion. It had to be a true story it had made in Spain on the barrel written in English and use black powder only stamped in the barrel in English. Seems the ships name was the Jukar from Spain. That was 25 years ago and I am still laughing.

Well of course the good ship Jukar sank! She must have been carrying 100,000 Spanish pistols and "Kentucky" rifles! She was so overloaded she foundered on the American shore, where the gun seller's buddy happened across the wreck and salvaged it. Entirely plausible. :bull:
 
a Hawkin marked as a military musket and a musket marked as a Hawkin

But in that case that isn't mis-marked guns..., that's because when nicky-newguy the intern finished wiping the dust off of them (he was wiping down both at the same time) he simply put them back on the wrong hooks in the wrong cases. GEESH what d'ya expect from the curator's teenage, video game playing son?

:haha:

LD
 
A long time ago when Iwas much younger and wet behind the ears to do with m/l ers, my wife and I found in a secondhand dealers shop what we were told by the owner was a (first model brown bess ). We scrimped and saved the money together, just before we payed and picked it up I found out from an old collecter that it was a fake an old movie prop and that he and others had pointed this out to the owner, saved just in the nick of time ,and I haven't forgeten that wormy sob . That is the reason of this topic to honestly help newbes in our sport.
 
I came across a cva percussion kentucky pistol marked circa 1812 at an antique shop on my way back from Kalamazoo one year.Funniest thing was it was put together out of a kit by ME in junior high school probably using a pocket knife and a screwdriver and sold years later at a garage sale.
 
Did you buy it?

I did correct a county historical society museum on the i.d. of an antique gun in their permanent display I think in Colorado -- I dunno. Don't remember but it was probably something like a Krag identified as a Civil War musket. The writing on the card was older than I was and I am not a kid...
 
Rod L said:
...The auction house advertised them as 1700s vintage, if I remember they went for $7000+. The kicker is they had to go out and fire them to "make sure they worked" --as if they couldn't tell a flintlock would work just by working the lock and checking the barrel. Said nobody would buy them if they didn't work :shocked2:

Needless to say, I was less than impressed, I won't make an effort to watch that program again.

Rod

The rifling must have been pristine too because that's critical for antiques...
:doh:
 
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