Well, another Rock Island Premier auction is finished, so it's time to check out the hammer prices for the pieces that we looked at in videos. Hang on to your wallets... :)

Now that the June 2016 Regional auction at Rock Island Auction Company is complete, we can take a look at the final prices realized for each of the guns that I looked at in videos. Most of the guns in this auction were sold in batches, so the prices don't generally reflect the value of individual...

The Astra Model F was the final evolution of the Astra 900, a C96 Mauser lookalike. The Model F used detachable magazines and was select-fire, with a very effective rate reducing mechanism in the grip. It was adopted by the Guardia Civil in 1934, and 1,126 of the guns were produced in 1935.

O...

Most people assume that the AR15/M16 safety/selector lever was designed specifically to be very ergonomic and shooter-friendly, with the "safe" position putting the lever right under the thumb to allow a quick and easy snap into semiauto mode. Well, that's not actually the way Eugene Stoner initi...

It's that time again! The March 2016 James D. Julia auction is all finished, and it's time to look at the final sale prices on the guns we saw videos on. The Confederate revolvers in this auction brought some pretty impressive prices - as did the gorgeous Holland & Holland 4-bore double rifle!

Final prices from the October 2016 James D Julia auction - these include the 15% buyer's premium on top of the auctioneer's hammer price.

Guy and Leonard A-R-West have published their third book about black powder military breechloaders, "Development of the Podewils & Werder Rifles of the Bavarian Army". It follows the same format at their previous books on the Chassepot and Dreyse systems, including the hand-drawn illustrations. T...

Let me preface this by saying that I remain a big fan of the Scout Rifle concept and the Steyr Scout in particular. When I ordered a copy of Richard Mann's "The Scout Rifle Study", I was hoping to find a critical assessment of the concept. I was hoping to see pros and cons of the forward-mounted ...

Rory Reynoldson has recently published a small Pocket Reference for the Savage 99 lever-action rifles. This is a collector's resource that includes the particularly important tabular sort of data for keeping on hand at gun shows and the like - serial number ranges, model designations, calibers, b...

I am very excited to finally be able to formally present to you Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles 1866-2016! After about 3 years of work, it's finally here and shipping. My goal with this book was to create a reference guide that would allow someone to identify any French military rifle ...

Anthony Vanderlinden is a noted FN collector and author of a book on FN Mauser rifle as well as this volume on FN's Browning pistols. Both are excellent reference works, with a remarkable amount of contextual information in addition to the very specific detail that appeal to the collector. This w...

Dieter Marschall originally published his book on Walther Pistols in German, but it was translated into English to meet demand form the collector market here in the US. This is the third English edition, expanded form previous ones. Unlike most books on Walther, this one covers all of Walther's p...

Joel Black partnered with several coauthors (Joseph L. Davis and Roger G. Michaud for the first and Homer Ficken and Frank Michaels for the second) to produce two volumes cataloging an immense variety of Webley solid-frame revolvers. These books include only small and scattered text segments, wit...

I initially put off getting a copy of Jan Balcar and Ron Clarin's book on the Spreewerk P38 because, well, I assumed it was just about Spreewerk. Upon finally reading it, I discovered that it is actually a very well-rounded history of the P38 as a whole, with particular extra attention given to S...

"The Ross Rifle Story" is the Bible of Ross rifle collecting - it is the only substantial reference work on the subject and it has a tremendous amount of information about the development of the Ross. However, it is also one of the worst-edited firearms reference books I am aware of. It has a sec...

While we were at the SAR West show this year, we had the chance to chat with Teri, who runs NambuWorld.com. Teri is a Canadian collector who took a longtime interest in Japan and built a very impressive collection of Japanese firearms and militaria, and her web site is a great source of informati...

We took part of our recent European excursion in England, and part of that time was spent at the National Firearms Centre in Leeds, formerly known as the Pattern Room. The gun collection there was started in 1631 as a repository for reference examples of British military equipment, in an effort t...

Today we are speaking with Bill Chase on the subject of restoration of collectible firearms. Mr. Chase is a very talented machinist and artisan, and has substantial experience in restoring firearms, including manufacturing new parts for some very rare and valuable guns. This video was promtped by...

Ralf Dieckmann is a German-born firearms designer who grew up as a small child in Berlin during World War II. His interest in firearms developed in the post-war years with war detritus literally lying about in the streets. He emigrated to Canada and enlisted in the Canadian military, where he fir...

While I was visiting Galesburg, I had the pleasure of meeting Nicole Wiley. She is working on organizing a massive reference book on German .22 training rifles (like the Sportmodell and KKW), and was kind enough to give me a tour of Robert Simpson's collection of these guns. It was a very interes...

The M1 Carbine has long been a bit of an enigma to me, because I have never had really good luck with the design, and yet they were extremely popular with American soldiers, German soldiers, Korean soldiers, Vietnamese soldiers, and a great many other countries. So what's the deal? Is it as simpl...

Today I am visiting Simpson Ltd in Galesburg, Illinois - the question we are look at is one of the most common they hear from customers: how do you tell if a Luger is all matching? When the guns were originally made, the factory put the serial number on a whole bunch of different parts, and on ma...

One of the many projects that AR-15 designer Jim Sullivan was involved in through his long career was a project to found the Wayne Repeating Arms Company (or WRA Co., not to be inadvertently confused with any other gun company with those initials). The company was backed financially by none other...