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Million Dollar Dreams:
An Investment Class Comes of Age
LOT 144
Outstanding Well-Documented, Historic, Outstanding U.S. Henry Nettleton Inspected Colt Cavalry Model Single Action Army Revolver Part of the Only Known Pair of Cavalry Models Shipped by Springfield with John Kopec Gold Seal Letter as Pictured on the Cover of Cavalry & Artillery Revolvers...a Continuing Study
“When someone pays 300,000 dollars for a firearm, its history,” noted collector Frank E. Bivens Jr. remarked in 1973 after an ornate flintlock from the collection of King Louis XIII of France went up for auction. The $300,000 winning bid by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art set a new record for the fine arms field at the time and helped establish the genre as an elite collecting class. Half a century later, another pinnacle piece from King Louis XIII’s Cabinet d’Armes is being offered by Rock Island Auction Company this August in Bedford, Texas. Anticipation surrounding our August Premier Auction has stirred considerable interest in the collecting sphere, which we’ll touch on in greater detail, but first let’s explore how the fine arms landscape has evolved over the decades.
The $300,000 benchmark set in 1973 would be surpassed
numerous times in the years to follow,
but the auctioning of a seven-figure firearm wouldn’t
be realized until 2002 when a brace of flintlock pistols documented to George Washington crossed the podium at Christie’s for $1.97 million. Even still, such an impressive result was considered the exception for the genre, and the million- dollar firearm remained an elusive achievement until recent years.
and paired firearm lots to surpass
the million dollar mark on the
auction block have gaveled at
Rock Island Auction Company,
with six of these sales achieved
in the last five years alone. That
prestigious list includes the
flintlock pistols of Alexander
Hamilton, the Colt revolver of U.S.
President Theodore Roosevelt, and a historic pair of Remingtons owned by General Ulysses S. Grant that earned $5.17 million in May of 2022.
Though the arms collecting market has been building momentum for many years, its recent growth has been unparalleled. One example dates back to May of 2016, when Rock Island Auction Company set a then-record for the most expensive single firearm sold at auction with a historic Winchester Model 1886 rifle that realized $1.27 million. Two years later, we eclipsed our own record with “The Danish Sea Captain,” a rare cased Colt Walker that took home $1.84 million. Thanks to factors like the global reach offered by digital bidding platforms, the greater availability of prestigious arms collections, and a burgeoning contingent of buyers seeking portfolio diversification, the million-dollar firearm had gone from rare outlier to a status enjoyed by an ever-expanding pantheon of top-tier investment pieces.
The increased competition to own these giants in the genre can be illustrated by examples like “The Millikin Dragoon,” a cased percussion Colt in immaculate condition. The prized revolver earned $805,000 in 2011 with Heritage Auctions, only to more than double that sum eight years later with Rock Island Auction Company, breaking into seven-digit territory with an impressive $1.67 million.
Elevated values are evident across every sector of the arms collecting landscape, including significant pop culture items. In August of 2022,
Though seven-digit collectibles are nothing new, the number of genres reaching such lofty heights has been ever increasing. A Patek Philippe Grand Complications “Sky Moon Tourbillon” set a new online auction pinnacle for luxury wristwatches last March with $5.8 million, while Michael Jordan’s 1998 NBA Finals Air Jordan XIIIs sneakers brought in a cool $2.2 million the following month, a record in the
field. The high watermark for a single stamp was broken in November as a rare “Inverted Jenny” hammered for $2 million, and less than three years ago a six-liter bottle of The Setting Wines 2019 Glass Slipper Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon attained $1 million at a charity auction, the first bottle of wine to reach the seven-figure milestone.
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LOT 1119
Highly Attractive New York Engraved Black Powder Colt Single Action Army Revolver with Relief Steer Head Carved Pearl Grip and Factory Letter
While not as widely recognized compared to the collectible classes mentioned above, the fine arms sector has been garnering prices that rival and sometimes surpass its more celebrated counterparts, demonstrated by the 2021 sale of the Colt used to shoot Billy the Kid for $6.03 million. The iconic Old West revolver is one of numerous investment-grade firearms to earn seven figures over the last 10 years, and the frequency of such sales has been steadily on the rise.
In the last decade, nine of the 13 single