...but I took the Monday Smith picture this morning.
You know what the difference is between a brand new Uberti Cattleman, Beretta Stampede, or Custom Shop Colt Peacemaker at Cowboy Bob's SASS Store and the faded little Smith & Wesson .32 Single Action top-break at some old guy's table at the gun show?
One of them may have actually been held by a cowboy.
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15 comments:
You damn skippy.
Huzzah for the Sunday (Sumday) Smiths!!
Great Grandpa was a cowboy.
Didn't have much use for revolvers though. Had a good selection of Winchester rifles that were used to good effect putting meat on the table.
It was a hard life, and back then the folks who did cow punching did it because other work wasn't available to them. The idea that being a cowboy was somehow a romantic life embraced by those who crave freedom is just an idea.
Then again, nostalgia is brushing the dirt off the past and remembering it for better than it was.
Glee!
I'm a sucker for the top-break action.
Though I'll confes to having an Uberti.
Though a 38... just what'd I'd need, another caliber.
I got a H&R Defender top-break .38.
Not sure about the cowboy, but it may have been carried by a mail carrier or dog catcher in WWII
My granfather was cowboy in Colorado and carried a S & W .38spl, that I still have and shoot.
In no way do I work for J&G Sales...
That being said, this looks to be the cool.
http://www.jgsales.com/product_info.php/c/collectors-corner/p/smith-wesson-2nd-model%2C-32s-w%2C-3in-nickel-antique-pre-1898-mfg-/cPath/384/products_id/4366
Yeehaw.
borisdabastid,
Cool old gun! But actually, J&G is at least $80 optimistic on that thing. I think my .38 DA set me back a whole C-note. (Which was a good deal, mind you, but a lot closer to the gun's real value.)
Hey...that ain't some old guy's table, that's Tam's porch!
Oh, I see...it ustabe on some old guy's table. Hard to make a deal with some of those old birds anymore; talk about optimistic!
So I see the one that coulda been a cowboy's...which one was it that coulda been Mark Twain's?
AT
AT,
Single-table Old Guys are my vendors of choice at gun shows, preferably in the age bracket where they're starting to clear out their safes a little bit. A lot of my South American Mausers came from one guy who had just retired and was starting to trim the fat from his collection; over the course of a year or two I probably picked up three rifles from him.
The S&W .32 top break I have belonged to my great uncle. He wore it a movie as an extra. The movie was filmed in Palo Pinto Texas about 1930. He owned the .32 and a 12 gauge long tom shotgun.
Fred
I've got a Bisley Peacemaker 38-40 that was manufactured in 1894; I'd be curious to know where it spent its first 50 years.
"Single-table Old Guys are my vendors of choice at gun shows, preferably in the age bracket where they're starting to clear out their safes a little bit."
There's that geography thing again; most of the old guys who set up at the shows in FLA, having helped *other* old guys around their Midwestern home base clear out *their* safes (just to help 'em out and be neighborly, dontchaknow), lug the big box of rusty junk that they didn't want for themselves to the show, fabricate a nice "it belonged to my pappy's pappy, who was a (war hero, cowboy, federal agent, mobster), but now I gotta raise money for my medicine..." backstory, put three prices on 'em, and them hobble off to the bank after the suckers clear his table.
Pardon me, I might be a bit skeptical, jaded, bitter, and sick to f'n death of Q-tips after a long winter of barely tolerating them here in the Funshine State...
AT
Got the Uberti ... also got a Smith Model 1 in .32rf .
And a half box of .32rf ammo.
Can't wait to pull that nickeled Smith at a SASS pocket pistol stage ...
I got into cowboy shooting over two decades ago, back when examples of the "name guns" weren't out of my reach if they were in rough condition. But originals in that state were usually tired and not up to the level of use (abuse) given by a fast and serious shooter. Went through several Lightnings (M1885 CLMR, not the '77 revolver), likewise '87 Winchester shotguns, a second-year '86 Winchester and even an Evans before FINALLY coming to the realization that modern repros and lookalikes were the way to go to have a gun that could be relied upon while simultaneously avoiding being so disrespectful of history as to flog something to death that had over a century of stories in it (although I'm still wistful about the Burgess shotgun tagged at $325 that got away).
The pocket pistols were an area that I could especially afford to indulge in. Prices were already high on Colt Model P or large-frame SA Smiths, but the pocket guns... Still sitting on better'n half a dozen itty Smiths, along with a batch of Merwins and others that let me have examples of their respective maker's designs and workmanship at an all-inclusive cost of less than what one beat-up 1st gen SAA cost at the time.
Pretty thoroughly burned out on the whole cowboy shooting thing some years ago, but I still appreciate and occasionally mess with the guns.
ThoreMo
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