GUEST: My father, he was kind of a hoarder, and he had a little trunk. He never let us kids into it. And when he passed away, my brother and I went looking and there was odds and ends in there. And this was in there. I have no idea where he got it because to my knowledge, he never left North Dakota except in the '30s when he was in California in the CCC camps. I'm not a gun man. I don't know much about guns.
APPRAISER: Your brother didn't want it?
GUEST: No, no. He got what he wanted out of the trunk, and I got this.
APPRAISER: Well, it's known as a Colt Third Model Dragoon revolver. They were manufactured from 1851 to 1861. This gun is in the 14,000 serial range, so I would estimate that it was somewhere around the 1850s.
GUEST: 1850?
APPRAISER: Somewhere in the mid-1850s.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Say 1855. This is one of Colt's early Hartford models. Colt originally founded his business in Patterson, New Jersey, in 1836. He made about 2,500 revolvers there before going out of business. And then he moved to Hartford, where he reestablished himself with the Walker revolver. When he went to Hartford, he partnered with Eli Whitney, Jr., the son of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. When Colt first started manufacturing his firearms, his initial contracts for the revolvers were military. But by the time the Third Model Dragoon was in production, there would be production for military and for civilian purposes. It's a six-shot revolver. It's black powder. And it's a percussion revolver. It has certain condition issues. Like you have the crack in the grip here, and you have a screw missing. But what I really love is there's like a piece of wood.
GUEST: I noticed that, too.
APPRAISER: That's jammed in here. So that's called the wedge, and the wedge holds the barrel to the cylinder pin, which keeps the cylinder on.
GUEST: Oh, all right.
APPRAISER: So what's interesting about wood though is that wood will decay over a period of time. So we're quite lucky that this piece of wood has stood the test of time and kept this revolver together.
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: I don't know whether or not that it adds or detracts to the value. You could probably find a replacement wedge, but I wouldn't advise it. I would say it's in good condition, although it has a deep brown, sort of rust patina to it. If I had it at auction, I think I would put somewhere around $2,500 to $3,500 on it.
GUEST: Wow, good. That's good to know.
