Joe Grine hasn’t been the only shooter with a hankerin’ for a 1911-patterned .22 rimfire lately, as this engraved Colt Ace proves in spades. On March 13th it sold for a mind-blowing $103,500, at a superheated firearms auction held by the James D. Julia auction house.
You know that guns are a smoking-hot commodity when a winning bid of over a hundred large for a pistol isn’t even the biggest ticket of the day. The little Ace didn’t have a chance: eight other auction lots (most of them vintage Winchesters) which sold for over $200,000 each. At the end of the multi-day auction, the total haul was approximately $18 million.
The auction’s top bidder took home this engraved Winchester Model 1866, after parting with nearly $301,000 for the privilege.
Slightly lower on the bidding scale (and much higher on the ickiness scale, at least for some of us) was a scoped combination rifle once presented to avid hunter, Luftwaffe chief and sick little fuck Hermann Goering. It went for $115,000, including commission.
Most of us can’t even dream of spending that kind of coin on anything that doesn’t come with a mailbox and a 30-year mortgage, but if I had that kind of money sitting around for collectible guns I wouldn’t have spent it to fondle the personal effects of a fat and perverted Nazi douchebag…
Because I wouldn’t have any money left after I spent it on machine guns! Dozens of fully-transferable NFA guns were on the auction block, where the bidding was hotter than an M-60 after its third belt of 7.62×51. An M-14 went for $31,000, and a BAR brought in almost $29,000.
But there were cheaper bargains to be had, however: ugly but functional Reising submachineguns sold for as little as $5,000, and transferable M16 receivers for as low as $11,500. Instead of posting all the pictures here (so we can all drool at the things we can’t have) I’ll let you check them out for yourselves at the Julia Auction site.
One last thing, before I go: am I the only one who thinks these prices are (more than) a little bit crazy? I don’t like to think about another election-year gun price bubble, because it seems like ammo prices are just finally getting back to almost where they were three or four years ago. I really don’t want to go there again.
There’s some amazing pieces on that site… for the price of the Colt, someone could have bought a BAR, a 1928 Thompson, and a Browning Model 1919… plus with some change left over!
I do agree that the sale of Nazi-related items does raise ethical issues. Personally, I’d rather those items end up in a museum, than money becoming somebody’s profit. Anybody else see the 4-shot Nazi belt-buckle gun?
http://jamesdjulia.com/auctions/catalog_detail_shots.asp?Details=44205&sale=320
Wonder how that works… I did find this:
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/08/20/german-ss-belt-buckle-gun-koppelschlosspistole/
Now I can get wanting that for the sheer oddness of it but wanting a rifle simply because of whom it belonged to is weird and weirder still if it was a sick twisted nazi
$103,500? That seems like a lot, but think about how much he’ll save shooting .22 LR over 45!
The buyer can make the money back in a year if he shoots only 10,000 rounds a month.
I’ve never seen profanity before in a TTAG article. Did Goering drink your milkshake?
Why would anyone spend that much money to buy a machine gun at an auction? Don’t they know they can just go to Walmart? Jeez, some people….
Stuff I’ll never be able to afford, but sure is pretty to look at.
Makes me wish my great grand pappy had ordered a “deluxe” model 1886 with engraving instead of the standard version. Oh well. At least it isn’t too valuable to shoot.
A gun is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. Not more, and not less.
Amen to that. The vast majority of firearms lose value after they’ve been purchased, so buy only buy what you can use – more or less…
I’ve attended J.Julia auctions twice, but only for double guns, never pistols or odd items. They come up with some spectacular shotguns every year. No, I’ve never bid on a nicely-cased matched pair of Purdeys. But when it’s that or college expenses…but then maybe I’ve got it wrong….
HOLY MOLY !!!! Wes Adams, the gun collector who amassed that collection must have been a ball to go “shopping” with! Aside from the Nazi stuff, he had real taste in Winchesters.
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