April 24-25, 2019 Extraordinary, Sporting, & Collector Firearms
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/24/2019
This was a purposely made prototype using surplus Smith carbine parts, but newly made purposefully produced frame made without a tumbler and no factory markings anywhere on gun. It is merely stamped "PD30" on left side of barrel and "PD" on bottom of frame. We assume the "PD" stands for "Product Development". The U.S. government as well as a lot of manufacturers began experiments at the end of the Civil War with using existing tooling to manufacture the wave of the future cartridge rifle. This is one of those guns and is mostly likely one of a kind. The Smith carbine was made by the American Machine Works and Massachusetts Arms Co., patented by Gilbert Smith, and manufactured 1861 to 1865 as a .50 caliber percussion breech loader single shot. They were one of the top producers of firearms during the Civil War and it is only natural the government and/or the company was looking for a way to modernize the existing carbines and tooling to fire a cartridge self-enclosed case. Features half octagon to round barrel, military carbine rear sight, German nickel post front sight, walnut stocks, blued barrel, case colored frame, and carbine butt. There are no military inspector stamps or agent stamps. CONDITION: Barrel is a blue-brown patina with overall age freckled appearance. 30% original case colors on frame with dark age freckles. Wood is excellent with just a few scars. Bore exhibits strong rifling. Probably a one of a kind find.