Buying A Pair Of Colt SAA -VS- Italian Replicas?

[Dispatch]

The first firearms were too big to carry. After years of refinement, holsters came along.

Yea but they had to have carried the very first pistols in something... 

[Abilene]

The dragoons were carried in pommel holsters.  I think there were some belt holsters for the earlier single-shot pistols, weren't there?   

[Dispatch]

Another dilemma, is there such a thing as having too many pistols??? 

During the civil war, Confederate cavalrymen carried many, some 6 to 8 on average I read...

[River City John]

Yea, I took his comments as being testy, if I remember right, everyone in that shop seemed a bit agitated for some reason, maybe it was because it was also a pawn shop.
It's alright, it worked out to my benefit as it made me see clear that having two that I could actually use was the best decision. 

Odd in that you can see on the picture of the consecutive revolvers the cylinders had been turned and had scored the metal leading into the bolt stop cutouts. Tells me the bolt was dropping early and scoring the cylinder.
I'm guessing your cautionary comment was about the second picture posted.

[Dispatch]

Odd in that you can see on the picture of the consecutive revolvers the cylinders had been turned and had scored the metal leading into the bolt stop cutouts. Tells me the bolt was dropping early and scoring the cylinder.
I'm guessing your cautionary comment was about the second picture posted.

This is them... 
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/829539421

[Major 2]

Well, I just came back from looking at them, not a single mark on either one of them.

Absolute perfect condition, as new as if they were just shipped from Colt.

I felt like Homer Simpson salivating over a full box of brand new doughnuts. 

I mean, just look at that cylinder (attached)...

It was what the shopkeeper said as I was handed one is what stuck in my mind, in a stern voice he said "don't cock the hammer, don't turn the cylinder, don't slide the ejector"...

It dawned on me then, what I was ready to buy right there on the spot, was too good for what I wanted them for.

I thought how could I buy these and then seriously expect to use them, it seemed like a waste and I'd feel so guilty in doing so.

Not to mention the $4,500 -plus tax-, out the door offer they made me cooled my heels in putting any such wear on them.

Nonetheless, I have decided I will place a custom order with Taylor's And Company on Monday for a matching pair I like, in the caliber I want.
 
I guess it's like anything, you can't know about something until you look into it... 

I'll keep you posted.

It was what the shopkeeper said as I was handed one is what stuck in my mind, in a stern voice he said "don't cock the hammer, don't turn the cylinder, don't slide the ejector"...

I can understand both his and your point of view....

it is common curtesy not to cycle someone's new gun ?.... unless permission is granted

It was obvious by his statement it was not, you wisely walked away 

[1961MJS]

Hi

I only have ONE nice looking firearm, not a Colt.  I was after a .45-70 1886 lever gun, and Chiappa makes them.  I took a purdy one with nice wood and lots of Case hardening instead of the plain ole one I was after because the distributor had the purdy one,  but nobody had the plain Jane one.  Shoots ok, but I don't play it much, not because it's purdy, but because I got a couple of Krags.

I ended up with a couple of Schofields since the SAA doesn't fit my hands all that well.  I kept one back just in case, but the first one is fine, but I need to start playing the second one.

Have fun.

[Baltimore Ed]

Buy American.

[Coffinmaker]

Nah.  Looking at the Gun Broker photos, there is no actual contact marks on the cylinder notches or leads.  What looks like wear is light reflection for the photographs.  I do well understand the dealer's desire to keep the guns as pristine as possible for maximum value to a Colt Cultist Collector whom will be willing to make the purchase in hope the guns will form a part of their 401K.  NOT.

Still, that price tag is OBSCENE!!  Five Grand for a pair of current manufacture Colts is just flat ridiculous.

[Dispatch]

Well, the order is in...

2 checkered 'Gunfighters' in charcoal blue(special order), 5.5" barrels, .45 long Colt, Taylor tuned, $800+ a piece.

They said they are going to 'try' to get them ordered with consecutive serial numbers.

Taylor's said it's a custom order so it'll take about 90 days give or take.

[nativeshootist]

This is sort of late. But my local gun store  has this for sale https://www.gunsamerica.com/971341825/Colt-SAA-2nd-Generation-357Mag-5-1-2-nickel-consecutive.html

[Major 2]

Nah.  Looking at the Gun Broker photos, there is no actual contact marks on the cylinder notches or leads.  What looks like wear is light reflection for the photographs.  I do well understand the dealer's desire to keep the guns as pristine as possible for maximum value to a Colt Cultist Collector whom will be willing to make the purchase in hope the guns will form a part of their 401K.  NOT.

Still, that price tag is OBSCENE!!  Five Grand for a pair of current manufacture Colts is just flat ridiculous.

Keep in mind , the price of admission

includes ...
,
Paying a UAW union workers - high wages including Health & Welfare and 401K  , Vacation , 
Connecticut workers? compensation tax and unemployment insurance tax + Cost of living increase clause in the contract

then there are required specific permits and licenses.

Alarm Permit
Building Permit
Business License and Tax Permit
Health Permit
Occupational Permit
Signage Permit
Zoning Permit

withholding tax and business entity tax & Insurance.....

Just for the privilege of DBA Hartford, CT - a Non-right-to-work state !


"Ol" Mario or Luigi  over @ Pietta / Berretta / Uberti in Gardone have none of those , de ducks


You want a COLT ...pay the man

Pietta... pay the importer

[Baltimore Ed]

And don?t forget my favorite-taxes, corporate taxes, fed, state and local despite the fact that people don?t seem to grasp is that corporations, companies, businesses or retailers DON?T pay any taxes- the last guy in line, you and me, the American consumer pays them. Income tax just is a political racket used by politicians to get them reelected, they write the laws to benefit themselves and their rich contributors so the rich pay virtually nothing, the poor get money back that they didn?t pay in and the working guy or gal PAYS for everything. Close down the irs and make those guys tax or fraud investigators [which is rampant] and have a federal sales tax that applies to everyone including religious entities but not businesses. Collect sales tax on money spent by drug-gambling-prostitution, the shade tree mechanic, the kitchen hair dresser etc when they go to the Food Lion, walmart, ABC store or pimpmobile dealer. Collect the tax when the money is spent not earned with no exemptions. People say it?s not fair but the states collect the same x% sales tax from everyone and no problems. The wealthy pay taxes on Lincolns, estates and Gucci while the rest of us pay taxes on Fords, townhouses and Wranglers. And while I?m ranting don?t forget term limits, 2x 6 year terms or 3x 4 year terms are plenty and the last term they serve can actually be used for the benefit of the country and the taxpayers and not for the all mighty political party or war chest they will need for the next election cycle in order to stay in office until they die. And when they leave from inside the beltway they are prohibited by law to have any dealings there.

Sorry for my rant. Guess I got off topic a hair. Soap box mode off.

[Major 2]

covered it

business entity tax =  corporate taxes, fed, state and local


as for the rest.... preaching to the choir ...Im afraid 

[Dispatch]

I don't mind paying a slightly higher price for something exceptional but there is a difference between paying a slightly higher markup and just getting ripped off.

Can you believe, since I went there they have been calling me leaving messages to see if I still want them.

I would have bought them 'IF' the shop would have had them at The Blue Book Of Gun Values appraisal price ($1,895), but what they were selling them for is as Coffinmaker said, almost $5k is just simply obscene.

This shop is selling them at a super jacked up price that just isn't warranted and unfortunately this is the case with so many other sellers, that is why their stock sits on the shelf for years and no one buys them.

It's a damn shame as someone could be enjoying them but won't be due to price... 

[Dispatch]

This is sort of late. But my local gun store  has this for sale https://www.gunsamerica.com/971341825/Colt-SAA-2nd-Generation-357Mag-5-1-2-nickel-consecutive.html

Too bad they are in .357 but thanks for the heads up though.

[Professor Marvel]

This shop is selling them at a super jacked up price that just isn't warranted and unfortunately this is the case with so many other sellers, that is why their stock sits on the shelf for years and no one buys them.

Pawn Shops seem to have a tendency to do that.....

[Dispatch]

Coincidentally I found this article which talks about this same topic at hand, I found it in the new issue of Old West History, Guns & Gear, its titled:

'Are They Any Good? Real Versus Repro Classic Guns Of The West'.

While storied names command frightful premiums, authenticity doesn't have to!
It sold initially for $17.50. Today, with limited wear, an early Colt Single Action Army might fetch $90,000.

These prices (debut retail and a current Blue Book Of Gun Values estimate) should catch the eye of any investor.
In 1873 a Double Eagle gold piece contained 0.9675 oz. of gold. At most hardware stores the coin would have bought a new SAA, plus a holster and a box of cartridges. Now, at $1,300 an ounce, gold has appreciated far less than the revolver. Even a current single-action Colt - fresh from the custom shop with no history to add value - commands $1,800. Round figures. You get the idea.

So, if you found an early Peacemaker in an old house, as did one fellow in 1925, you'd surely pay $4 he gave the widow of the late army officer who had owned it.
Though it had likely never strayed far from that New Hampshire farm, and thus lacked any link to frontier bloodshed, this revolver fetched $242,000 at a Christie's auction in 1987.

Which is why, after parting with a much-later SAA, I still see a therapist.
Even Colt's a decade into smokeless production come dear these days. A SAA built shortly after 1896, when the vertical screw locking the cylinder pin gave way a horizontal lock, can fetch $11,000, says Blue Book.

No matter the scuffed blue and scarred stocks dragging the condition down to 80%. Some Cowboy Action shooters might fire such a gem. Others would find the cost of authenticity too high especially if the homestead begged a new furnace or a heedless bovine had wrinkled the family buggy at Dead Cow Curve.

A Modern Take
Though the SAA's profile, balance and operation predated metallic cartridges, hand gunners kept Colt's Hartford plant humming into the 1920's. But by the onset of World War II, demand had fallen victim to double actions and autoloading pistols. In 1919, Stoeger's Shooters Bible listed SAA's at $ 38.50. Colt wouldn't resume production until 1956, when it bumped the price to $125.

Other manufacturers showed no interest in reviving the type - save William Batterman Ruger. "I had always loved the old single-action Colt. I can remember yearning for one when I was 14 (and) living in New York City"...

Ruger's Single-Six appeared in 1953. Orders for the .22 flooded in. A centerfire version in .357 Magnum came two years later. "Rebirth of the single action", proclaimed Shooter's Bible.
Ruger's refinements included "best quality music wire springs throughout, no leaf springs," a "micro adjustable rear sight." Retailing for $87.50, this revolver, the BlackHawk, had a "chisel pointed alloy steel firing pin mounted in the frame."

The 1950's also ushered in the Great Western series of SAA lookalikes. They offered the same barrel lengths as the Colt.
Also, "every-part... in the Great Western Frontier is interchangeable with the Single Action Army revolver hammer and trigger and bolt screws."

The Great Western featured a floating, frame-mounted firing pin. Proof loads generating pressures of 52,000 psi evidently produced no hint of frame failure in revolvers bored for .357 Atomic - which, with Great Westerns in .44 Special, listed at $125. In .38 Special and .45 Colt, the price was $97.50.

These seem modest sums now; they would have stunned men who carried early Colts. Sam Bass and his gang got only $11 from one robbery. Another netted them a dozen peaches.

March 1877, gang members Robert McKimie killed stage driver Johnny Slaughter during the hold up. The other outlaws voted McKimie out, but the damage was done. Were it not for Slaughter's death, Bass and company might have lived well off a Nebraska train robbery. Besides an immediate $1,300, plus loot from wealthy passengers, the baggage car disgorged a mother lode of $60,000 in gold!
A fortune in the days of $18 revolvers! Alas the bandits flaunted their wealth, and the law took full advantage.

Italy Steps Up
Roughly a century after the SAA appeared, black powder enthusiast Mike Harvey and his wife Mary Lou opened a gun shop in Houston. Using a museum rifle as template. Mike built his own muzzleloader from scratch. Then he bought Allen firearms.
Cartridges rifles and revolvers followed percussion front-stuffers.

To grow his business, Mike visited Brescia, in Italy's "gun valley". Impressed by Aldo Uberti's understanding of "the art of the gun and how to capture it," Mike engaged him to produce the 1873 Colt SAA in all details save proof marks -  but using the best steels. Fit, finish and function had to match the original's.

So began Cimarron Firearms. Over the past 30 years Cimarron has worked with Uberti and other quality-conscious manufacturers to introduce dozens of historically significant rifles and handguns. Most designs hark to the 1860's and 1870's, but you'll find 1847 Walker and 1848 Baby dragoon Colts, and the 1851 Navy favored by Wild Bill Hickok. You can also get the Richards-Mason conversions that adapted percussion revolvers to metallic cartridges, and true-to-life 1858 Remington.

The Cavalry and Bisley versions of Colt's 1873 came in a variety of finishes, even antique "original" and bright charcoal blue. Case-colored frames are standard; some models offer a a stainless option. Cimarron also recreates the important Model No. 3 Schofield hinged-frame revolver. It comes in .44-40, .45 Colt and .38 Special. The faithfully reproduced Model No. 3 Russian is listed in .45 Colt and .44 Russian.

For shooters enamored of Hollywood's renditions of the Old West, Cimarron has firearms faithful to famous films such as the Rooster Shooter, Wyatt Earp Buntline, Doc Holliday Thunderer and even The Wild Bunch 1911 from Sam Peckinpah's 1969 western.
In addition to Cimarron, other importers like Taylor's & Company and Dixie Gun Works also offer reproductions from Italy. National allegiance aside, how good are Italian reproductions?

My Cimarrons include 2 5 1/2" Pre-War Frontier in .45 Colt, a 7 1/2" Old Model P in .44-40 and a 4 5/8" Model 1877 Lightning in .32-20. The .45 and .32-20 have the cross button cylinder pin release; I specified the the earlier screw lock for the .44-40. I hadn't planned on buying so many, but each impressed me with its faithful detailing, the fit of its parts and its smooth action. Trigger pulls aren't uniformly perfect, but I'm finicky about triggers, and there's no other visible or palpable flaw.

Given traditional fixed sights, I'm pleased this trio shoots close to point of aim with Black Hills Cowboy Action ammo: 250-gr. RN at 725 fps for the .45, 200-gr. RN at 800 fps for the .44-40 and 115-gr. FP at 800 fps for the .32-20.
Comfortable loads, they shoot as tight as I can hold over bags. The .45 blessed me with a knot so snug it qualifies as outrageous good fortune.

None of these revolvers has malfunctioned. I did, however, lose the .32-20 to Alice, whose hands couldn't be pried from that graceful bird's-head grip: "It's cute!" The report was mild; her bullets sailed true. I don't have a three-gun belt anyway.

Home Of The Brave...
What about U.S. Companies? While Colt Custom Shop SAA's still turn heads, Ruger six guns cost much less. Cosmetically appealing, they're reliable, accurate and durable. In 1958, on the heels of the Single-Six and BlackHawk, Ruger fielded a petite Bearcat .22.
The "Old Model" Super BlackHawk .44 Magnum followed within a year.

From 1963 into mid-'64 Ruger produced the Hawkeye pistol in .256 Winchester. Its revolver profile belied a single-shot action. The total run of 3,075 Hawkeyes sold into the early 1970's.
In 1972 Ruger began making its Old Army black powder .45-caliber revolver. Unlike Colts, it wore a top strap and adjustable sights. The same year Ruger also announced its New Model Single-Six and Blackhawk, with two-position hammer and transfer-bar ignition. Safe with six rounds!

The New Model Super Blackhawk arrived in '73. Eleven Single-Six rimfire to the .32 H&R Magnum: ?the muzzle energy and velocity  of which exceeded those of the .38 Special... The 2007 debut of Federal's .327 Magnum would give the revolver even more zip. Single-Sixes took Bisley form in 1985. A new Model Super Blackhawk Hunter with scope-friendly rib appeared in '92 an updated follow-up to the original Peacemaker and a tribute to both Samuel Colt's design and Bill Ruger's vision.

In 1993 Ruger announced its Vaquero, true to the original Colt SAA in hand, but with the mechanical innovations Ruger had earned increasing market share for over four decades. In .44-40, .45 Colt and .44 Magnum, and at a price of $394, this fixed-sight sixgun was irresistible. I bought one.

The self-loading pistol, now with synthetic components, has a firm grip on L.E. And military sales. But the single-action Colt, a century and a half old, still seduces shooters who've never felt the handle of a plow.

Call it a faultless marriage of form and function. Blame an intemperate fascination with the feral men whose bullets riddled the frontier. We still adore the SAA. Its domestic and offshore offspring aren't "real Colts", but they're real good and in some ways better! And you don't need a tall stack of Double Eagles to buy one... 

[sail32]

How authentic, close to the original 1873 Colt, do you want it to be ?

I prefer Pietta's, and I have had bad luck with other makers.

[45 Dragoon]

I've worked on both and owned an El Patron Comp.(Uberti)  that was an absolutely amazing S.A. !! The only Pietta's I've tuned ('73 copy wise) are a pair of "El Malo's' (they have octagon barrels). They were surprisingly  a lesser revolver in my  opinion. The action parts looked like they came from the '70s, just like the the cap and ball guns they sell. Uberti has the " market " on action parts for sure (Sam would have had a fit to have them!!!). The Piettas were turned into some "fast as lightening" Comp. guns!! Coil action springs and all the other goodies!! It definitely takes more "tuning" for them than the Uberti product. Of course, it depends on what you expect a tuned revolver to be!

Mike