Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at some of the guns they are selling in their upcoming September of 2016 Premier Auction.
And I pulled out two because I think these two represent a really interesting facet of
firearms collecting, and kind of people in general.
And the idea is people in general don't really change. Trends we see today probably aren't brand new.
They're probably the same trends that people were seeing 100 years ago and 500 years ago.
And what makes these two guns a good example of that is this one right here
is a 16th century German wheellock pistol. It's authentic, its original, it's very old.
And this one is the exact same style of pistol, but it's a reproduction.
It's not a reproduction made today or yesterday. This is a reproduction made probably over 100 years ago.
This is a late Victorian era reproduction of the exact same style of pistol.
In fact so close that they both have the Nürnberg Firearms Guild marking on the barrel.
On this gun it's legit, on this gun someone just copied the mark to make it look like the correct style of pistol.
So there are really two different kinds of reproduction guns.
On the one hand you have faked guns, where someone tries to pass off a gun as being older than it really is,
or having a specific provenance that it doesn't actually have.
We certainly get that today. There are people with guns like Lugers and Single Action Armies, the very collectable types of pistols
(or rifles for that matter), there are people who will try to take a low value one and turn it into a high value one
by adding markings or fake ageing to it, or changing serial numbers, or that sort of thing.
Really scuzzy behaviour, frankly, despicable.
On the other hand we have exactly the opposite opinion of someone who tries to make a new copy of an old gun.
There are a bunch of Italian companies like Uberti that make brand new reproductions of various types of Old West style guns.
That's fantastic, that allows people to be able to go out and shoot a pistol of the style that was in use 100 or 200 years ago,
without actually having to put wear and tear on an original gun, or fork out the money for an original gun.
Two different ideas. Well, something like this can be either one of the two.
A hundred years ago it's not like people were that different. If you wanted a cool wheellock pistol,
well, if you wanted an original one, if it's let's say 1900, you're still looking for a gun
that's 300 years old if you want something like this.
Or you can hire a gunsmith to make you a new one.
You don't have to pass it off as an original, it's just the same style. You can go out, you can shoot it, you can enjoy it.
You don't have to worry about damaging an original artifact.
That's something that was just as legitimate 100 years ago as it is today. And people did that.
Now what gets interesting is this gun now looks rather aged. It is in fact over 100 years old.
How does one tell the difference? Because it doesn't matter whether the original manufacturer of this reproduction
intended to pass it off as something older, or simply intended it to be a modern creation when it was made.
Well, 100 years later who knows? The guy who made it's dead, the guy who originally commissioned it or bought it, he's dead.
Probably a bunch of the other intermediate owners are dead as well.
It ... brings up an interesting conundrum for people who want to collect the old guns.
This is one reason why you have to really know what you're buying when you're spending a lot of money
on a scarce and desirable gun. Because something like this, for all you know the current owner thinks it's original,
even though it's not. There doesn't have to be any malice or ill-will involved
to end up with something that isn't what it's claimed to be.
Now all that aside, these are two pretty darn gorgeous guns. The workmanship that went into both of them is fantastic.
And it's really interesting to look at a reproduction from the Victorian era where,
you know what, this was all still done by hand pretty much the same way that this one was.
So let's take a closer look at these two, because even though this is a reproduction now,
this is a Victorian era wheellock pistol. And that's got some real value of its own.
So when you put these two guns together, you can definitely tell that this is the older one.
However when you have them separate,
and you're just looking at one or the other it's really hard to tell, how old is this?
You can tell it wasn't made yesterday, but it takes some real expertise to be able to look at that
and identify the fact that it's a Victorian era gun, and not a 16th century gun.
So of course these are both wheellocks, the other thing I found really cool about them is
just how very similar they are in style.
You can see obviously the basic layout is the same. They both have this very abrupt angle, sharp rake to the grip here.
They both have the same style of trigger. They both have this huge ball pommel.
In theory this has been largely stylised in these guns, but in theory
a lot of these early single-shot guns you have a mace head basically on the butt end of the gun.
So that after you fire your one shot the thing is actually usable as a handheld impact weapon after that, if you need it.
At any rate, we have creature's heads carved into both of these.
So even a lot of the engraving styles are pretty similar.
You can see that the basic patterns here with the vertical lines going around the pommel are repeated there.
We have this flower engraving, border lines basically, coming up on the corners of the gun.
And you see that repeated on both of them, just really cool to take a look at.
Let's check out each of these in person.
Now if we take a closer look here at the tops of the barrels we can see an area where
you get into ... kinda some collector conundrums.
So this N over a split shield, that's the guild mark of the Nürnberg ... firearms making guild in the late 1500s.
It's repeated on this pistol, and they've got a really nice copy of it here. Now there's also a rampant unicorn
just barely visible above it on the old pistol. But is it legitimate to put a mark like that on a reproduction?
Certainly it makes it look more accurate, more original, but 100 years later someone's going to look at this and say,
"Ah, that matches up perfectly to the Nürnberg guild in the late 1500s. That really suggests that it's original."
So, a bit of a conundrum there really.
Even with all this going on, it's really hard to walk away from these pistols without a
real admiration for the workmanship that went into them.
This bone inlay, every one of these little dots is individually inlaid. And there's some really cool little scenes,
there's a hunter here. All of this hand carved out of bone and inlaid into the stock.
The same type of thing here. This is, I suspect, mother of pearl I think.
It's got this really cool multicoloured glisten to it, which is really neat to look at.
And recognising that this was made over a hundred years ago, this was the same thing,
someone didn't 3D print this and glue it on.
Someone didn't you know design this on a computer. No, someone carved all of these things by hand.
It's really, really quite impressive.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
I figured we'd take a minute to just look at one of the collector issues that comes up from time to time.
And hey, if we can do it with two really impressive looking pistols like these two, so much the better.
Now, they are both of course coming up for sale. If you'd like to own either one of them,
maybe you're in the market for an original, maybe you're in the market for a sort of original.
It is original, just not as old as this one.
At any rate, take a look at the description text below, you'll find links to Rock Island's catalogue pages on both of these pistols.
You can check out their pictures and their descriptions, and either place bids on-line
through the website, or come up here to Rock Island and participate live in person.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]