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Extremely Rare Documented Pecos City Texas Colt Sheriff's Model Bisley Single Action Army Revolver with Factory Letter - Serial no. 259273, 45 Long Colt cal., 4 inch round bbl., blue/casehardened finish, hard rubber grips. Offered here is a rarity in Colt collecting: a factory documented Sheriff’s Model Bisley revolver with an ejectorless 4 inch barrel. The ejectorless Colt “Sheriff’s Model” Single Action Army Revolver is one of the rarest and most sought after variations of the legendary Peacemaker. In “The Official Record of the Colt Single Action Army Revolver, 1873-1895” the authors stressed the rarity of the ejectorless SAAs as a whole (barrel lengths ranged from 2 1/2 to 7 1/2 inches in the study) and state that “just under 600 ejectorless Single Action Army revolvers were produced in all calibers from 1882 to the 1930s.” A Sheriff ’s Model Bisley is especially rare. As noted in the 30th Anniversary Edition of “A Study of the Colt Single Action Army Revolver,”“Still rarer than factory engraved Bisleys are the smoothbores and Sheriff’s Models... As of this updated revision, there are now nine known original, ejectorless, short barreled Bisley Model revolvers” (page 142). When the aforementioned publication was first published in 1976 the authors had yet to encounter an original Sheriff’s Model Bisley: “We will now review one of the rarest classifications of the ejectorless single actions, the short barreled Bisley Model...The opportunity to examine an original ejectorless Bisley Model has never been afforded” (page 76). In “The Book of Colt Firearms,” Colt historian and author R.L. Wilson asserted, “Less than a dozen Sheriff’s Models were made” (page 265). Total production of the Bisley Model stood at around 44,350 with about 8,500 chambered in .45 LC. This is an extremely rare Bisley variation, indeed! Based on Colt factory serial number ranges this Colt rarity was manufactured in 1904. The accompanying factory letter states the revolver was sold to Zimmer Hardware & Implement Co. of Pecos City, Texas, and shipped on October 3, 1911 to Wyeth Hardware & Mfg. Co. of St. Joseph, Missouri, with a 4 inch barrel in 45 caliber, blue finish and type of stocks not listed. This was a two gun shipment. In “The Book of Colt Firearms,” Sheriff’s Model Bisley no. 259336, which is only 63 numbers later than this example, is pictured and cited as having an October 1911 shipping date (page 266). Henry C. Zimmer was the owner of the largest hardware and farm machinery business in Pecos. The success of his business was entirely of his own making as he arrived in Pecos around 1886 with
nearly nothing. His parents had arrived in the United States from Germany and he was born in Saint Francis County, Missouri, in 1864, the youngest of nine children. Two of his brothers died for the Confederacy during the Civil War.