1863 Cavalry Sharps carbine

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sharps under 500

have it test fired by a gun armorer, who is familiar with the 45-70. or if it re-chambered checked with the ammo.
 
Replica? That's still a good price.

When I finish working on the double barrel shotgun, there's a Sharps cavalry carbine that I'd like to work on. I hope they can get some money up for wood and a hammer.
 
Well, I have the Civilian rifle version already, and it's pretty much spot on, but I don't imagine the carbine will keep up. I mostly got it because of the saddle ring and the price, and because I have this weird western fetish.
 
That's a great deal!!! If you bought it as a shooter tells us how she shoots!!! :)

BHP, Are you a N-SSA shooter?
 
About two years ago, a friend bought a near-new, unfired Sharps '63 carbine for $300. I thought that was a really good price since the gun was not a repro. Some folks are just lucky.

Jim
 
A buddy of mine bought it ten or fifteen years ago from Dixie Gunworks. He still lives in our old home town of Healdsburg, about sixty miles north of San Francisco. Forty years ago, when we were kids, it was rural, and you could just go down to the river and shoot on a sandbar…today it’s a bed and breakfast suburb of the Bay Area, and any such activity would result in your swift arrest. To shoot, he has to make a forty mile trip to the coast, to the Coast Guard range. Needless to say, he hardly makes it out there anymore, and when he does he wants to spend more time shooting, than loading, so black powder guns get left at home, and he mostly grabs a .22. He had this, unfired, new old stock, in the back of his safe, so he’s letting it go for what he paid for it back then. Don’t worry, he knows what it’s worth, but we went trough grades 6 through 12 together, and we’re still friends now. That, and he knows I’ll shoot it. Also I think he has serious ‘’wood’’ going for some WWII Colt, so….
 
No, Crawdad, I don't shoot with the NSSA, but I do belong to the local BP club, and will sometimes get into CSA costume to shoot. My brother is a member of the local SCV [our great grand-dad was involved in the Late Unpleasantness] but I have been shooting black powder and Civil War stuff since I was fourteen or fifteen....forty years ago.
 
Jim, that's great. I can tell one almost as good. a buddy of mine picked up a surplus 1863 that had been rebarreled and converted to a .45-70 buffalo hunting rifle for a gent that died before the buffalo did, and never got to shoot it. It passed to his heirs, who didn't have his intrest in guns and hunting. Fast forward about a hundred and thirty years, and the last of this line is an old guy in ill health, trying to raise money, and offers the rifle to my buddy for a thousand dollars. Well, my buddy knows that repros are selling for twice that, and slaps leather, like a Texan [wallet leather that is] and counter offers $900.00, which is ALL the cash he owned, at the time. So he got some high roller's custom buffalo gun, unfired, in .45-70, for $900.00!
 
There are some interesting stories out there. A boss of mine had a neighbor lady give him her late husband's gun because she wanted it out of the house. So this guy, who has no special interest in guns, had (last I heard) a brand new, fluted 1860 Army, in the case, with all accessories. It had belonged to an ancestor of the late neighbor and I don't think it had even been out of the case until my boss took it out for me to look at.

I told him what it was worth, but of course I didn't have enough money to even think of buying it.

Jim
 
I love how the paper Sharps clips the cartridge at the back end like a cigar! I could imagine how reloading one in the Civil War would be much quicker/easier than a front stuffer.

Nice find!
 
As a 'ute (actually teenager Vinnie) I had a buddy that had a Sharps on the wall over his bed. He sometimes took it down and played with it. It had no manufacturer's markings on it that we could find and at the time I was unimpressed with proof marks and inspectors marks and such. Mainly remember that we could find no whole names or words on it.

It was a carbine that appeared to be a 59 or 63 for paper cartridges and had a cap thrower on it.

Have not seen nor heard from the guy in thirty years wish I knew what it was.

Another buddy's family had a Spencer supposedly brought home from Chickamaugua that we played army with a bit.

I was once engaged to a girl that as a young'un played army with the boys by dragging around a 1873 trap door. When I saw it when she was 30 it was in about the shape one would expect from having been dragged through the woods and sand of coastal Florida by a wild child.

I do wish I had taken the opportunity to buy that sharps but 19 y/o s can be idiots as I was much more interested in a Type 99 Jap rifle and a K98 in his closet at the time..... even his pre 1900 25-36 marlin with tang sights barrel sights and a side mounted long straight scope that rode in recoiling mounts was more interesting than that old Sharpes at the time (OK the Marlin was also not as desired at the time as the WWII rifles by stupid youth) Stupid I was.

-kBob
 
I'd like to think we get smarter....I know we get older, either way. I've been collecting guns for forty years now. I could tell you some tales of triumph ...I once traded a Type 99 Arisaka for a Triumph that only needed a zener diode, which I had a spare for in my tool box...and some tales of defeat...I had a Colt Derringer I bought fot fifty bucks and sold for $250.00, because no one had .41 rimfire, only to see the same gun in Fladerman's book for $800.00, back then in REAL money, not today's dollars.
 
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"zener diode"

Hey you aren't an exmember of the class of 1977 of USMA by any chance are you?

A zener diode was the cornerstone of the cheating scandal of the class of '77. Looks like the USAFA is trying to beat them out at the moment for Cadets returned to civilian life without degrees or commissions.......

The guy that owned that unmarked Sharps is a Whole Man now class of 75 of The Citadel and retired from the USMC.

That T99 he shared with his brother was said to be highly inaccurate. When they said it even split cases and sometimes failed to fire at all I asked to see the cases.......they were actually managing to set of 6.5 jap in the 7.7...... We one day fired his dad's WWII issue Victory model .38 Special that his dad "lost" getting out of his sinking Hellcat somewhere in the pacific. Never could talk him into trying to find things to shoot the Sharps with. He seemed a bit scared of the idea.

-kBob
 
no, I was a Destroyer [USS Tattnall, DDG 19] crew 1976-1980. HTFN. I have a nice Victory pistol [not the .38 S&W short stubby caliber, , but the Smith and Wesson in .38 special, looks like my 1917's little brother] but I traded a crossbow for the Arisaka, and the 99 for the bike, and I had a '77 BSA Thunderbolt, and in my spare parts bag on the handlebars I had the spare zener diode. So I had the Triumph up and running a few hours later. Learned to drive a car a few years later, when I was 30.
 
looks like I might swap it off for a '51 Navy Colt, [Pietta] and a really sweet '61 Navy [looks like a mini-1860 Army] in a case, with a brass mold and cap box, with a hundred cash for my wallet, to sweeten the pot.
 
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