Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns A very rare Colt SAA

I recently acquired a Colt Single Action Army that may very well be one of only two made by Colt. If so, this is truly a very rare gun!

The Colt Single Action Army was first produced by Colt in 1873 in 44 Russian and 45 Colt calibers. Here is a recent find that appears to be one of only two SAA's made in 1875 in 38 Colt caliber, and this particular gun was evidently unknown to the experts because it has never been mentioned in any of the books.

In his book "Colt Revolvers and the US Navy 1865-1889", C. Kenneth Moore devotes 10 pages including detailed close up pictures of Colt SAA serial number 16737, which was shipped to the US Navy in 1875 as a test gun. The gun I have is serial number 16829, and is identical to the Navy test gun.

Concerning the Navy gun sn 16737 Moore states in his book: "Fortunately, this arm was located during the course of research in a private collection. The Colt Factory has no shipping nor any other record of it. However, sufficient proof has been found to determine it is the first .38 caliber Colt Single Action Army revolver shipped. The Colt Factory may have retained another revolver in this caliber for its own use, but there was no evidence located to this effect. As will be seen, it was shipped from the Colt Factory on July 7, 1875, to the "Bureau of Ordinance, Navy" for testing." (Emphasis added by me)


My gun has all matching numbers; frame, trigger guard, backstrap, cylinder, barrel and grips, the assembly number on the frame and loading gate match. All the numbers are identical and of the "early style" configuration. The barrel is 6 1/2" long and the address lettering on the top is of the early "script" style. It is chambered in 38 Colt, the chambers are drilled straight through; the rear of the chambers are .382" and the fronts are .379". It chambers 38 Short & Long Colt, 38 Special and 357 Magnum. It will not chamber 38 Colt New Police or 38 S&W. Interesting to note that the rifling is not the early "narrow lands" type, and not the later "wide lands" type, but different from any I have seen before. It has 6 lands & grooves, but the lands are wider than the grooves!.

It is in excellent condition, retaining some of the original case colors and bluing, with no pitting. The bore is in excellent condition, with no pitting. The overall appearance of the gun is one that was carried or handled a lot, but not fired very much and/or was cleaned thoroughly afterward, with no corrosion from black powder evident.

I contacted the Colt Archives Dept, and they have no shipment record of either sn16829 or sn 16737. The Archivist said that this is not unusual with the early guns, as records are incomplete for this period.







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Outstanding!

Wow! That's a beauty. My grandfather was a huge Colt SAA collector, along with Winchester 1873s, and would have loved to see that piece. Hope you can track down its history!

If I ran across one of that rarity and significance, I'd do as much research as possible, then have a competent appraiser verify its authenticity. That's probably a six figure gun, based on the last Walker I saw for sale

I trust you're not going to shoot any .357 magnums in it?

MAN! That is a sweetheart of a Colt. Even thought it will chamber a .357 I damn sure wouldn't fire one in it. A lot of the early .38's had bored through chambers that would and a lot of them got blown up!

I would shoot it with standard velocity or cowboy loads though without compunction.

Damn and who would've expected it to be in such good condition! I see traces of case colors all over the frame and it has obviously never been buffed by the gorilla that did so many other old Colt's. That is a real gem! Do you think it shipped as a 6�"?

i thought the 38colt came out in the 1890's?

The 38 Colt wasn't introduced until around 1886. A prototype cartridge and gun certainly could have been built for some tests, but proving that would be hard to do. A 6 1/2 inch barrel is certainly different, as is the 38 stamp on the trigger guard. The earliest model did have a 2 line patent date ending in 1872 until 1877.

The knurling on the hammer seems different from that era, but it could still be correct.

Whatever this gun is, it certainly looks real and has the patina and condition that make it look legitimate. I would never pay a premium price for something like this without ironclad provenance that it is real. If it is real, the sky is the limit on it's value...

The .38 Colt rimfire came about in 1872 and then the centerfire version in ~1874. Both in the Richards-Mason conversion of the 1851 and 1861 Navy .36's.

"The knurling on the hammer seems different from that era, but it could still be correct."

Good eye, Shrapnel! It is a later period replacement hammer. Fortunately, I had a proper period hammer with the correct knurling pattern that I installed in the gun after the pictures were taken.

The barrels on both the Navy gun and my gun are 6 1/2" and came from the factory in that length. Moore quotes in his book communication between Colt and the Navy concerning the specifications required by the Navy of a 6 1/2" bbl and 38 Long Colt caliber.

quite a beauty!

I am not trying to pick things apart, but the other thing i noticed was the "blue" of the heads of some of the screws to me don't quite match the patina of the rest of the revolver. Now on the other hand, quite possible i am off base.
what intrigues me about this stuff is a early 44.40 i have that the barrel was cut down. The head of the colt collectors group in the state saw it and called it an "indian gun" in that indians often did that to early colts. I ain't good enough to know the truth of it. I should post a picture for comment.

When a gun of that rarity and significance comes along, the first thing I worry about is that it's a fake. There are guys out there who will spend years properly aging a gun to make everything look right, and some are so damn good that even the experts don't catch them.

I gentleman I know did a re-finish job on a Dickson round action 16 bore that was so perfect it took a first place in a Concours event. The judges thought it was essentially a new condition gun, when in fact, it had a good lifetime of hunting before Steve refinished it and made it all right again. Then he told everyone it was refinished, and people were appalled. They thought he was trying to put one over, but he had told a whole bunch of people that he re-did the gun. He just wanted to see if the judges couldn't tell. Well the judges were pissed becuase they couldn't tell (quite honestly, even knowing up front, I couldn't see much evidence of refinish other than the fact a 100 year old gun looked perfect).

Some are just that good with refinishing, but some are just as good with aging (those are the SOB's you have to watch for). The refinish guys are the SOB's you want to know when it comes time to finish your gun.

I learned a little about aging a gun when I bought a Winchester 1897 that was completely brown patina on the right side, and nearly silver on the left side from the way it was stored. So I cleaned up the patina on the right side, and added patina on the left side so the gun didn't look so goofy.

I once saw a S&W #1 that had Jesse James scripted on the backstrap. The gun was well used, and rust pitting went into the scripting. It was a fake, and even under a magnifying glass, I couldn't tell; you had to actually use a microscope to tell (and I still wouldn't know what to look for). But someone engraved the name into an otherwise good #1, and then spent months and months aging that script to blend and look right. Essentially ruined the gun, because now anyone honest is very afraid to sell it lest it get back into counterfeit circulation.

If I had that gun, the first thing I would do is get it authenticated by the best in the business. The one red flag is the rifling issue. 1- being nearly perfect. 2- If it's truly unique from anything else that Colt had at that time, that is suspect; but there can be a good reason.

The rifling should match other .38 revolvers they made at that time because it's not real logical for this one revolver to have a completely unique barrel from other .38 revolvers Colt's made. If they have .38 barrels/barrel-stock around, it makes sense they'd use that and not something unique (unless they were experimenting).

But I don't have a clue off the top of my head if Colt's made any other .38 revolvers that time. 1875 was the year they designed the cartridge, so they obviously had something they were working with, but I don't recall off the top of my head if anything was actually offered to the public that early (I wanna say they didn't have any .38's of any model back then, but I don't trust my memory). If there weren't any others, that really complicates authentication because you have really only have one good source for authentication...the other .38.

The obvious would be to reach out to the owner of the one known and authenticated to see if the barrel rifling matches, as well as everything else.

Looking at the photos, my first reaction is that it's in great shape for a gun of that age. Second is that everything does appear to match in appearance, so it looks righteous from the photos.

If it's the real deal, that is one hell of a great find. I wish you the best of luck. If you get it authenticated, I'd love to hear how it all goes.

That's a good catch. Those screws are Nitre blued and with the heads sticking out as far as they do, they should wear much faster than anything else around. Color Case is MUCH tougher than Niter bluing. So what does that mean?

They could be replaced screws. Why? Beat's the hell out of me. Not unreasonable that in the lifetime of a SAA that old that a screw or two would break or some other reason need to be changed (buggered up, etc.). But all 3, that's odd.

These old guns are the proverbial "enigma wrapped in a mystery". I've seen fully authenticated originals that have had weird anomalies like that. Where everyone agrees the gun is righteous, but not one person can come up with a solid reason why something is out of place.

The owner could have decided to take the gun apart at some point and completely trashed a screw. Or lost one, and then realized when he bought a replacement, the 3 wouldn't match; so bought a set of 3 replacements. Just no way to tell.

That's one thing I miss from Arkansas. A friend who deals in fine guns occasionally gets these mysteries, and it's all kinds of fun to try to unwrap the mystery.

Colt SAA's are almost in a world of their own collecting-wise. Relatively to other collectibles, lots of them were made, but besides the rare variants, even common guns are desirable. For instance, the 41 Colt is much rarer than the 45 Colt but the 45 Colt 1st gens will almost always bring more given the same condition. That said, ultra rare examples bring the most and high condition guns bring more than lesser ones. This particular specimen is nearly unique. The circumstances lend credence to its not having been cut. Cutting the barrel lowers the value dramatically. That said, if the barrel on this gun has been cut, I don't know how much it would effect things since the rarity of the piece so far overshadows the other details. Cut barrel, refinish, mixed numbers...these are the big value killers. I don't think the gun has been refinished. A knowledgeable collector as the OP obviously is, should be able to tell rather easily if the barrel has been cut, claims of super-fakers notwithstanding. Some screws apparently have been replaced. Replacement screws have the least impact on value of any detectable replacement on an SAA. On two extremely high condition guns, one with replacement screws and one without, the one without would bring more money...but it would be hard to tell that the screws were replacements (assuming fitting screws of the correct period's appearance) on a high condition gun in the first place!

All that said, I don't think a few replacement screws affect the value of this gun at all. The reason they appear to be replacement screws is the difference in appearance of the screws in question and a couple of other screws on the gun which are pretty obviously original or very old replacements.

Your post is all over the place and makes no sense. For instance, why would everybody agree the gun is "righteous" when it had obviously replaced screws? I don't know what a "righteous" SAA is, but evidently one with totally original parts, which is not what one with replacement screws is. That said, replacement screws do not kill the value of the type of gun that normally has them. ie a SAA with enough wear on it to tell it has replacement screws. True experts will replace lost screws with the same type of screws that the lost screws were. Aging a screw is a lot less of a process than a whole gun and lots of collectors replace non-numbered parts. So no way to tell what? That just sounds ignorant.

The case colors look good and could easily be original. Screws that have bluing on the frame wouldn't wear any more than the frame, as a holster wouldn't touch the screws anyway.

The overall condition of the gun appears excellent and regardless of barrel length, the numbers match and so does the condition. I like the gun for what it is, not what it could be. Without absolute proof of it being a test gun, it is a very nice early first generation gun that is easily worth what a first generation gun with that much finish would bring...

I guess I didn't make my point well.

It's righteous if the gun is not a fake, and actually is what it appears to be. The screws won't change that. The issue of the screws is just why are 3 screws different. When evaluating to determine if something really is what it's supposed to be, you look for inconsistencies; things out of place.

I didn't say anywhere that the screws changed the value, that wasn't my point. Just saying that 3 changed screws draws scrutiny when looking at the gun. Hell, we don't even know for certain that they are replaced; just speculating based on photos, which is pretty weak.

I'm just saying they're inconsistent. That cold me something, or it could just mean someone replaced the screws, that's all.

Here's the thing. The screws protrude higher than the frame, and the case colors are worn off. So you have an area where there is no case coloring left, and then a very lighly worn screw right next to it. So how did the case hardening go away without the screws being affected? The other screws match the patina of the rest of the gun, but these don't. Also, all the other screws show deformation marks from being assembled and disassembled, yet those 3 screws have screw slots that are perfect.

The screws are originally Nitre blued, which is notorious for not holding up well. So if the case colors are faded, worn, etc., it just makes sense the screws would have worn also. If they were recessed into the frame and below the area that's missing the case colors, then your statement would make sense. But you can clearly see from the photos that the screws project beyond the frame on either side.

Case colors will fade with time, it isn't a case of wear only...