Gun

Fine German sidelock ejectors do not feature often in the London salerooms but Gavin Gardiner’s 25% buyer’s premium) May 1 sale of sporting guns at Sotheby’s in London produced a pair that not only scored on quality but had a history to back it up.

This Chicago Firearms Co ‘The Protector’ palm pistol is estimated at $800-1200 in the Pook & Pook auction in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, on April 13.

A rifle from the personal armoury of Tipu Sultan sold for £60,000 in Oxfordshire last week.

MADAM – Responding to your article in ATG No 2365 ('UK salerooms 'not aware' of new laws on deactivated firearms'), I felt compelled to write in.

The National Ballistics and Intelligence Service (NABIS) has warned of a rise in defectively deactivated firearms offered at auction since the law changed this summer.

Was this the gun that John James Audubon (1785-1851) used to create the world’s most expensive natural history book?

Trade associations have defended the current firearms laws in the UK amid accusations on a BBC Panorama programme of a ‘loophole’ in gun control.

On the day that the Bastille was stormed Louis XVI famously recorded “rien” (nothing) in his game book.

The classic English sporting gun is a sidelock, but for many the ‘round-action’ shotguns perfected by John Dickson of Edinburgh in the 1870s are the most elegant of all.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Germany’s most expensive painting sold at auction, an unusual early firearm and a fin de siècle snake charmer are among the highlights featured here from recent auctions in Munich, Berlin and Cologne.

A trio of shotgun sales in the spotlight.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Cased pairs of pistols remain a particular favourite with collectors, being relatively compact and often in excellent condition after centuries cocooned in their brass-bound mahogany boxes.

Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sold the first instalment of de-accessioned arms and armour from the John Woodman Higgins Museum in Massachusetts back in 2013 and a second in 2014.

Sporting guns are a little different from other areas of the arms and armour market in that many that are well over 100 years old are still in use today.

It has been 50 years since Sotheby’s first held its annual August sporting guns sales at the prestigious Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.