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“When someone pays 300,000 dollars for a firearm, it’s 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 would be surpassed numerous
times in the decades 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.
Though seven-figure 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 wrist watches
in March 2024 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.
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, 10 of the 14 single and
paired firearm lots to surpass the million
dollar mark on the auction block have
gaveled here at Rock Island Auction
Company, the world's leading firearms
auction house, with RIAC achieving
six of these sales 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, the company eclipsed its own record with a cased
Colt Walker known as “The Danish Sea Captain” that took home $1.84 million.
Thanks to factors like the global reach offered by digital bidding platforms, the greater
availability of prominent arms collections, and a burgeoning contingent of buyers
seeking portfolio diversification, the million-dollar firearm has gone from rare outlier
to a status enjoyed by an ever-expanding pantheon of top-tier investment pieces.
Exceptional
Civil War Era
Factory Engraved
and Silver Plated First
Model New Haven Arms
Co. Henry Lever Action
Rifle with Wooden Henry
Cleaning Rod
6
LOT 1008
An Investment Class Comes of Age
Million Dollar Dreams:
LOT 44
Iconic, Exceptionally Well-
Documented, Winchester
Model 1892 Lever Action
"Mare's Leg" with Holster
Rig Used On-Screen by
the Legendary Hollywood
Actor Steve McQueen as
Josh Randall in "Wanted
Dead or Alive"