December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/12/2024
This 11mm M1871 Mauser is one of a group of “old Mausers” that the Irish Defense Forces sold to arms dealer Sam Cummings (Interarms) in 1959, along with shiploads of Irish SMLE rifles, handguns, machine guns, and artillery. The story of the Mausers’ sale and acquisition can be found in two articles in Man at Arms magazine: “The Irish Howth Mausers: Where Are They Now” (August 2019) and “The ‘Howth’ Mauser Saga: An Update” (December 2022). Both of these articles conclusively confirm the Irish provenance of many of the Model 1871 Mauser rifles that are now in American gun collections. This rifle is marked with an “M” and “C” stamping near its bolt handle, and it has a large, and very stylized, “RM” carved into the reverse of its butt stock—all of which are telltale indicators of an Irish Howth Mauser. There an incised "Myy18" (?, difficult to read) on right side of butt. This rifle was purchased directly from Potomac Arms in Alexandria, Virginia (Interarms’ retail outlet) by a previous owner in the 1960s. As is the case with many of the Howth Mausers that were imported by Interarms (and then sold through a variety of retailers) this rifle has a mismatched bolt—“88253”—but it chambers and fires .43 Mauser commercial ammunition. This Mauser rifle was used (and fired with blanks for demonstration) for about ten years in various Living History programs that centered on the activities of the “Fingal Volunteers” (5th Bn, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers) during the Battle of Ashbourne, the only tactical success on the part of the insurgents in the 1916 Easter Rising, and it was a focus of attention among attendees at a number of these historical events. This rifle was displayed in exhibits at presentations about Irish Nationalist arms to several gun-collecting clubs in the mid-Atlantic region, and it was featured in “Guns of the Easter Rising” in the September 2013 issue of the American Rifleman magazine as well as in a 2004 article about Irish Nationalist arms in Shooter’s Bible. The Irish Volunteers only smuggled 1,500 of these Mausers into Howth and Kilcoole from Germany in 1914. Many of them were destroyed during and after the 1916 Easter Rising, and it is estimated that Interarms was only able to bring a few hundred of these guns into the United States from Ireland in the late 1950s and early 1970s, and less than thirty of them remain in Ireland, mostly in museums. Many of those rifles in private collections in Ireland have, by regulations, been rendered inoperable and they command exorbitant prices at auction. PROVENANCE: Kenneth Smith-Christmas collection. CONDITION: Metal is bright throughout with some surface level discoloration and a few very minor areas of fine oxidation. Stocks excellent with handling marks with scattered handling marks and impressions throughout as befits a gun that was used during an insurgency. Mechanically fine, bore excellent with strong rifling and a few scattered areas of darkness that do not detract.