1865 Starr Cavalry Carbine Rifle
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GUEST:
I know it was a rifle of my grandfather's and I think it was his father's. When I was a kid, he kept it under his bed. When he passed away, I asked for that, just because that was kind of special to me.
APPRAISER:
I feel compelled to make the PSA statement right now...
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
...that we do not store guns under the bed of any sort, any type, any era...(chuckles) ...where a potentially interested child or someone else could access them. So the gun was made by the Starr Arms Company of New York, and they had gone into business in the late 1850s, initially producing revolvers for the U.S. military. It's a cavalry carbine that was made for cavalry use for the Union Army. It was contracted for very late in the Civil War. During the Civil War period, self-contained metallic ammunition is starting to come to the forefront of firearms technology. So now you have things that are much closer to what we think of as a modern cartridge with a brass case, and the primers in there, and the powder, and the bullet. So we just open it, put it in, and– and away you go.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Well, this is that evolution of being a cartridge gun. It's a breech-loading carbine, which means you load it from the breech rather than from the muzzle, like a lot of the guns during the Civil War period. By releasing that lever and lowering it, you can place a cartridge in the breech of the mechanism... (clicking) ...close it up. Once you cock the hammer, you're ready to go. Starr got the order very late in the war, and they don't start delivering them until March of 1865.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Well, of course, the war is over in April of 1865...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...so none of these ever get issued, ever get used.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
And even though they made 20,000 of the percussion guns for U.S. use, they only made 5,000 of these, and then they get sold as surplus. A lot of these end up going through retailers like Schuyler, Hartley, & Graham of New York and to the French, and do see military service during the Franco-Prussian War. And that's where a lot of our Civil War surplus guns ended up going. And then, of course, after the Franco-Prussian War, the guns were semi-obsolete to begin with. Now they're really obsolete. It's in really nice, completely untouched condition, and it doesn't have a French arsenal inventory number on the back of the butt. So I don't think this gun went to the Franco-Prussian war and never really saw any use. Because they only made 5,000, survival rate's low, and finding nice ones is hard. When you see the rough ones, they're going to bring somewhere in the $800 to $1,200 range, maybe a little bit more in an auction setting. This is a super crisp gun. And I think that realistically, in an auction setting, this gun is going to sell between $2,500 and $3,500.
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