Pistol

When we wrote about Charles Miller’s latest auction in London one of the star lots was a magnificent Asprey travelling case for the gentleman who needs everything. However, it was missing one particular item which a writing box on offer at the Dominic Winter May 18 sale provides.

Fine quality and condition are big factors in value for antique weapons, but an impressive provenance also fires the imagination, as two lots coming up in the Thomas Del Mar auction on December 6 demonstrate.

One of the most famous firearms in French literary history has sold for €360,000 (£305,605) at Christie’s in Paris.

The Law Commission is still keen to hear from collectors and dealers about the impact a legal definition of ‘antique firearm’ may have on the trade in period weapons.

The antiques industry is being called on to take part in a consultation to reform the law governing the sale and ownership of antique firearms.

At the end of the Second World War, this 18th century flintlock repeating carbine was thrown onto a huge heap of weapons confiscated from German citizens.

Old collections are the lifeblood of the arms and armour market, bringing carefully selected items with cast-iron provenance back to the market.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

TWO lots stood out among the 600 lots offered at Hampshire. One was an 18th century matched pair of brass barrelled flintlock pistols signed Burnford, London, which, because of a missing ramrod and broken trigger mechanism were catalogued a/f but sold to a collector at a quadruple estimate £1600.

Morphets, Harrogate, March 10. Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per cent A BIDDING duel by specialist arms and armour dealers was the highlight of Morphets’ 628-lot Yorkshire auction.

Headlining proceedings at Andrew Hartley, Ilkley on February 16-17 was a pair of late 18th century 8in (20cm) barrelled pistols by Ketland & Co, formerly in the prestigious collection of Keith Neal, dispersed by Christie's South Kensington in 2000 and 2001.

BILLED as the top gun on the catalogue cover of the September 1 sales at Lewes arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer's premium), this c.1649 German or Dutch 34-bore wheel lock pistol lived up to its reputation.

BEFORE the acceptance of the clay pigeon (patented in 1880) as the most suitable target for skeet shooting, there was glass ball shooting. Thought to originate in Britain in the 1830s, but quickly spreading to the United States, shooting at uniform spherical glass target balls was a recognised Victorian pastime that gathered momentum following the invention in 1877 of a trap capable of casting a missile through the air in a long arc.