Description

The Gun Digest Company, 1953, Volume II. Hardcover. Third Edition. Very good in acceptable dust jacket. Blue cloth covered boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. pages lightly aged but otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket has several 2" or less chips and tears and creasing along edges. Light to moderate overall scuffing and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. Black and white illustrations [From jacket flaps] Issued in a very limited number, the first printing was exhausted in a short time. A second small printing soon followed, but in a little while it, too, was sold out. Copies of Fourteen Old Gun Catalogs have been most difficult to find in recent years, and the infrequent offerings have brought high prices. The publishers are pleased to present this new, popular-priced edition to the gun-collecting fraternity. They will find it identical with the original issue. Reproductions of old gun catalogs bring to the reader a flavor of their day and an authenticity that nothing else quite equals. The queer type faces, the woodcut engravings, the ridiculously low prices, the glowing testimonials mirror for us the essence and the spirit of those far-off times, and with little effort we are transported back to the 70's and 80's, to be amused or instructed as we wish. The eight Sharps catalogs shown - 1859, 1864, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, and 1880 - represent all that are now known. These cover the rise and decline of the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company from its beginnings at Hartford, Conn., in 1851 to the death of the famous name in the early 1880's. The company had been reorganized in 1875 as the Sharps Rifle Company, moving to Bridgeport, Conn., that same year. During those eventful years the Sharps rifle gained recognition the world over as a reliable, powerful arm, the slogan "Old Reliable" being, in fact, used by the company in its later years and stamped thus on its barrels. Carried west by the mountain men and frontiersmen, the Sharps was highly coveted by the Plains Indians. In the Civil War the Sharps was chosen by Colonel Berdan to arm his famous Sharpshooters Company. In later years it became the prime favorite of the buffalo hunters. With the exception of the unique Model 1875 and the scarce Model 1877, virtually all of the many Sharps arms are pictured and described. Other catalogs reproduced in Fourteen Old Gun Catalogs are: Maynard, 1885; Marlin Ballard, 1888; Stevens Arms & Tool Co. 1888; Stevens-Pope, 1902; and the Sharps- Rowan testimony.