50 Years Ago: The World’s Costliest Gun

This excerpt was featured in the April 1973 issue of American Rifleman magazine. To subscribe to the magazine, visit the NRA membership page and select American Rifleman as your member magazine.

Recently an old gun sold for $300,000. Naturally it wasn’t just any old gun. It was a gun literally fit for a king and it had been owned by one Louis XIII of France, the most notable royal gun collector known to history.

Who would pay $300,000 for a gun? Obviously, not just anybody. The ornate early flintlock which belonged to Louis XIII was bought at auction at Sotheby & Co., of London, by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

The very fact that the high bidder was an art museum reveals why the piece commanded such an unprecedentedly high price. It was purchased as a work of art in firearms form, enhanced by its connection with royalty, rather than as a functional gun or ordinary collector item.

Nevertheless, American gun collectors were high in the running at the auction. A West Coast collector, Frank E. Bivens, Jr., bid up to $268,000, then yielded with the remark, “when someone pays $300,000 for a firearm, it’s history.” A rival museum curator sighed, “I just can’t believe they paid that kind of money.” An antique arms dealer commented proudly, “Gun collecting has finally come of age.”