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Pieces of history put on the auction block

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By Katie Vaughn | Tuesday, November 28, 2006 1:07 AM CST | () comments

Kevin E. Schmidt/QUAD-CITY TIMES Patrick Hogan, the president of the Rock Island Auction Company, shows off the Savage model 1907 semi-automatic pistol that was presented to Buffalo Bill Cody by the factory that made the weapon. The pistol is one of more than 2,200 firearms that will be on the block Saturday through Monday at the auction facility.

Compact, heavy and cold, the Savage semi-automatic pistol does not immediately stand out from the thousands of other guns prepared for viewing at an upcoming Rock Island Auction Company event.

Yet a stack of photocopied documents and a name neatly etched into the weapon prove how noteworthy it is: The original owner was Col. William F. Cody, known more readily as Buffalo Bill, the LeClaire, Iowa-born frontiersman and showman.

Cody helped popularize the circa-1907 gun, proclaiming in turn-of-the-century advertisements that he had converted from using revolvers to semi-automatics, said Patrick Hogan, president of the auction company.

“These were brand-new things” at the time, he said of the century-old gun.

Hogan said those who see and hold the weapon cannot help but sense its history. And all owners who follow Cody have served or will serve as caretakers of its heritage, he added.

“He was holding it, and now you are,” he said. “It’s going to be handed down through history.”

Hogan expects the gun to fetch somewhere between $90,000 and $140,000 at the auction that will take place Saturday through Monday. He also anticipates it will exceed $7 million in sales, making it almost double the scale of the past events the auction company has held.

“It is our finest in our history,” he added.

Auction company staff spent months receiving guns, writing descriptions of them and photographing them for catalogs. The catalogs — which are hundreds of pages long — are then shipped to buyers across the globe, and the staff prepare the weapons for bidding in the company’s 15,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art secured facility.

More than 2,200 firearms will go on the auction block. Among the items available for bidding are more than 1,200 handguns, 700 Colts and 125 assault-type sporting rifles.

Particularly significant are a Colt Single-Action gun that belonged to Billy the Kid’s captor and a set of Colonel Colt percussion revolvers once owned by Civil War Gen. R.B. Marcy, the company says.

Hogan, who has a personal collection of Smith & Wesson firearms, said up to 500 people are expected to attend the events, which include an all-day preview Friday. Many visitors will fly in from abroad, and even the auctioneers hail from Canada, he added.

However, before the first firearm is sold, more than 14,000 bids will be placed by buyers who will not set foot in the Quad-Cities. The majority of the transactions are made with people who bid via telephone, the Internet or a catalog absentee form, Hogan said.

Almost all those who will bid hundreds or thousands of dollars on the firearms are serious collectors, he said. His largest clientele base is professionals with an avid interest in history, he added.

“In collecting guns, it’s condition, condition, condition,” he said. “The only thing that trumps condition is history.”

Katie Vaughn can be contacted at (563) 383-2282 or kvaughn@qctimes.com.