1873 colt lever gun

[glcos]

never know what you might run across in small gunshops and my friend and i ran across a 1873 colt leveraction in what appears to be a 45 cal. the gun is all there. has saddlering. am familiar with 1873 winchesters but never seen a colt lever gun. will be a mantle gun and have no plans to shoot but was wondering if anyone had any info on 1873 colt lever guns. serial# looks like 538. thanks gary

[Griff]

Picture?

[glcos]

have no picture. will try to get

[Sixgun]

A Colt Burgess? For a guy with 2 posts, we need to see pics --------------Sixgun

[glcos]

my friend bought the gun and i do not have it here is the reason their is no pics.

[jjames]

Ten years early for a Colt Burgess.
Colt Burgess Rifle
Colt Mfg had only built 6,603 units from 1883-85 when production was suddenly discontinued.

[Barcelona Rick]

The Guns of the Old West talked about in another post had an article on the Colt Levergun....looks like a '73....rare !!!!

jumbeaux

[jnyork]

[pokey]

yup.

[Lefty Dude]

Burgess was a designer for Winchester. He left Winchester for Colt. Not surprising that a Burgess/Colt is very close to a 73 Winny.

Would love to see Pix's of the piece.

[Gun Smith]

Look on GB. It could be a Colt Burgess. The 44-40 could be mistaken for a 45 caliber. If it is, either his friend stole it, or the seller didn't know what he had. BIG BUCKS!

[claybob86]

Seems like I read something a long time ago that said Colt and Winchester arrived at an agreement that if Colt would refrain from making rifles, Winchester would stay out of the pistol business. Thus the cessation of Colt rifle production. Is this correct?

[Ysabel Kid]

BIG bucks!

[Pete44ru]

Seems like I read something a long time ago that said Colt and Winchester arrived at an agreement that if Colt would refrain from making rifles, Winchester would stay out of the pistol business. Thus the cessation of Colt rifle production. Is this correct?

Almost. The agreement was tacit.

When Colt started making the Burgess levergun, Winchester "fired a shot across Colt's bow" via having Colt's former Supt design a Winchester prototype revolver much like the Colt 1878.
After some "soul searching, Colt decided to abandon the levergun market", and instead introduced the Lightning pump rifles.

This back story is in the Colt Burgess article, in GOTOW, Spring 2010.



.

[Hobie]

I also fascinated by how many of the famous people from that era knew each other. Andrew Burgess was apprenticed to Matthew Brady before he began firearms design work. The Colt Burgess is one of those guns that excite the antiquarian among us even if it is true that it was failure in the market.

[Pete44ru]

According to the GOTOW article, it didn't really "fail", as much as it was forced off the market by Winchester (those guys played hardball ! ) - although it had some shortcomings compared to it's competition.

For instance, shooters of the day put great store in the '73 Winchester's dust cover, which the Burgess lacked - and was the main source of customer complaints.
A non-issue, today IMHO.

The article brought up another good point, though.

The Burgess was an "instigation" model - the rifle that encouraged others, like John Marlin ( another former Colt employee) that they could compete with the "mighty" Winchester, and win.

.

[RIHMFIRE]

Check out the video and commentary on the short history
of this firearm!
http://www.uberti.com/video/index.php

[glcos]

thanks for all the help. I think my buddy got a great levergun for a $100. dollar bill to hang over the fireplace.

[Buck Elliott]

the early Marlin leverguns made liberal use of Burgess patents

[Griff]

Oh, gosh, I'm remiss... Welcome to THE Forum. Yep, the Colt Burgess could be the one.

[Leverdude]

I also fascinated by how many of the famous people from that era knew each other. Andrew Burgess was apprenticed to Matthew Brady before he began firearms design work. The Colt Burgess is one of those guns that excite the antiquarian among us even if it is true that it was failure in the market.

It is very interesting. We think the world is small today but it wasn't real big then either. I'v read many times that when Win saw Colt making lever guns they threatened to start building revolvers and the result was they both kept doing what they did best, so I'm not sure if market failure is the right way to put it.

Not sure if Burgess actually worked for Win or Colt. He was a gun designer similar to John Browning & folks made guns from his patents as I understand it. Marlins first lever action, also the first sucessful lever action 45/70 was a Burgess design. Marlins current 39A locks up just like Marlins Burgess design. I'm not sure about the mechanics of the Colt gun but expect its very similar to a 1881 Marlin.

[Hobie]

My view is this, that with Colt's reputation and marketing savvy they only sold so many of the rifles and this market share was such that they thought they couldn't compete with Winchester revolvers (if you believe the story). I always wondered why they would think that if they would have difficulty breaking into the levergun market Winchester wouldn't have like problems breaking into the revolver market. I think they made the decision because they weren't getting orders sufficient to justify risking even a small part of the market share for revolvers. That is a failure in the market place. It has nothing to do with the quality of the firearm, it just didn't sell enough.