The Case of the Fake Colt SAA

It was Saturday at a late summer gun show. More vendors than expected for a summer show. The aisles were narrow. Made it seem like a lot of people were in the room. They weren’t spending much. I only had one reason for being there behind a table all weekend. I needed to curry favor with the show promoter. I wanted to keep my spot near the entrance for the fall and winter shows when sales are much better.

The guy behind me had two tables. On one sat a Colt Single Action Army with the old-style black powder frame. The barrel and cylinder were obviously much newer. His display card said “1861 conversion” because of the smokeless-era barrel and cylinder. He rattled off a list of guns he’d traded to “an old man” for it a couple of years previously.

Couldn’t be from 1861 because of the top strap frame. Never got as far as the patent dates on the frame. He insisted it was. “That’s what the book says” for its serial number. I had my Blue Book with me. Looked it up. 1874. 1871 and 1872 patent dates on the frame. He changed his description card.

Things were slow, so I looked at it briefly a couple more times. He really wanted me to buy it. Even tried what salespeople call The Puppy Close on me. Take it home with you overnight — no money down. Hold it some more. Look at it some more. The sucker, now having already owned it and probably showed it off to others, will rarely bring it back. I’m wise to that one. No thanks. Besides, I can’t afford Colts. Too rich for my blood.

The Power Of Temptation

Sunday was even slower. Greed glands oozing, he was eager to trade, no cash either way. It was serious lust for the guns on my table. Looked at his some more. The low serial number was tempting, even with the replacement cylinder and barrel. Halfway through the day, we did it. I gave away a bunch. Colt SAA #11301 became mine. Its barrel and chambers contained at least 20 years of accumulated filthy black dust. Maybe 40. Maybe more. To me it was just a reworked early Colt, a gun to have some fun with. Probably didn’t have much value to a true collector. And now I have way too much invested in it.

Harsh Reality

At home Sunday night, feeling foolish. Put the serial number into Google’s search box. A couple of hits. Clicked on gunboardvalues.com. Someone posted photos, including the serial number, of one his dad left him.

Somebody else claimed #11301 was Doc Holliday’s gun, citing a photo of it in R.L. Wilson’s 1992 book The Peacemakers. Page 160. The caption says the gun belongs to The Autry Museum (theautry.org). There it was on their site, item number 86.12.1. Photos of their #11301 include closeups of the serial numbers on the frame, trigger guard and grip frame. The size and style of the numbers stamped on mine, theirs and the three #11301s I looked at online are all different.

So I bought Wilson’s book and the Colt collectors’ bible, A Study of the Colt Single Action Revolver, by John A. Kopec et al. And Colt Single Action Revolver Study — New Discoveries by C. Kenneth Moore. This is getting expensive!

I contacted The Autry Museum. About 10 years ago the previous firearms curator, Jeffery Richardson, realized the Holliday attribution for this gun was not credible. The Museum no longer associates this gun with Holliday. Now it’s just an old Colt.

Will the real Colt SAA #11301 please stand up? How many more #11301s are there? Where and when did the legend of a Colt with this serial number belonging to Holliday originate? Is it even true? When did the counterfeiting start? Does the real one even still exist? Perhaps only The Shadow knows.

A Hard Lesson

Reasonably sure mine is a fake. Its barrel is a post-1929 style Colt. The lettering style on the side looks authentic, but it appears there might be too much space between the words. I don’t know about the inscription stamped on the top. May not even be a Colt barrel. The one-piece walnut grips at least look period authentic, but with the original India-inked serial number inside inked out, they’re not original to the gun.

I consulted The Colt Single Action Revolvers by Jerry Kuhnhausen. The ratchet teeth on the rear of my cylinder do not look like the drawings of the various Colt styles, nor like the Italian replica shown. The firing pin in my hammer is second-generation style. Other small details make me suspicious. Is mine even a real Colt?

Should have taken The Puppy Close offer and brought it back Sunday. I quickly fell way over my head into the world of fakes and counterfeits without realizing it.

Dodge The Scam

My advice? Learn everything you possibly can before buying any first-generation Colt Single Action Army. Spend the dough on the books. There is also Kopec’s book Colt Cavalry and Artillery Revolvers and several others by such renowned Colt authorities as Don Wilkerson and Doc O’Meara.

Expensive books are less expensive than being defrauded. There are many deliberate crooks and con artists in the world of collectible Colts. There are others innocently selling what they don’t understand.

A $105 Colt Archive Letter about a Colt original specs and shipping history is interesting but takes 150 days or so. It does nothing to prove any particular one is authentic anyway.

The best option is a $300 (plus shipping) first-hand examination by and a letter of authentication from noted Colt revolver expert John A. Kopec (johnakopek.com). Colt collectors consider them “Letters From God.” It only takes about a week plus shipping time. Any honest seller should be willing to do that and add the cost of a Kopec letter to the price of the gun. Cheap insurance for you. Don’t let greed for “the deal of a lifetime” override good sense.

Epilogue: The Con Man

In the seven years since this case was first opened, new facts have come to light.

The serial number falls within the range of a mixed production batch of government and civilian guns. My 11301 has a “US” marked cylinder frame, but with no Army inspectors’ acceptance stamps and with a civilian backstrap/triggerguard. Guess what Colt did with those still-usable .45 revolver frames and parts that failed to meet government specs? Collectors often say, “Colt never wasted anything.”

Finally popped for a letter from the Colt Archives. My order came back, “Unfortunately, we are unable to find a record for your Colt … A lot of records for early SAAs like this one have been lost.” How convenient for the fraudsters.

Examining photos of the few Franklin Mint replicas of 11301 since offered for sale on eBay reveals there has been more than one type style used to stamp the serial number. The barrels were rendered useless by driving a steel plug into the rear. Many also had the common orange plastic plug in the end of the barrel, as used on toy guns, to signify that it was not a real, functioning firearm. Cylinders were machined to make them useless. Their firing pins are not only ground down flat but the firing pin holes are drilled much too high in the frame.

The true value of antique firearms is whatever the seller/swindler is asking and whatever the buyer/sucker is willing to pay, very similar to the activities in the worlds of collectible art, vintage automobiles and antique coins. Fakes, forgeries and crooks abound. Who is to say what the actual cash value of something is? Only the brokers and recognized “experts” representing sellers and buyers.

For very wealthy high-end collectors of anything, it can be easier to silently absorb the loss of a million or more dollars than to admit they were ignorant enough to get fleeced. If you can afford it, it’s easier to remain silent to save face and let the heirs deal with it.

A Character Of Ill Repute?

In the case of world-renowned antique firearms expert R.L. Wilson, he commonly represented both sides, collecting commissions from both ends of the deals. He would tell the sellers how much to ask and then assure the buyers the items were authentic and a good investment. He was directly employed by Colt during 1964-65 and published … The Official History of Colt in 1978. In 1979, he published a list of all the serial numbers in Colt’s records from 1837-1978.

However, rumors about Wilson’s sleaze had been circulating among collectors since the 1980s. Word spread slowly in those pre-internet days. He barely escaped trial for plundering the Colt factory collection donated to the Connecticut State Library because of the lack of expertise of the state police investigators and the statute of limitations. There were other formal accusations and investigations back then as well, but he managed to skate on all of them and even was able to get himself appointed Counseling Curator at the National Firearms Museum in 2000.

Ripples Of Reputation

In the case of Colt SAA #11301, when The Autry quietly rescinded the Holliday cachet from their own gun around 2007, give or take a couple of years, it was likely due to Wilson’s 2006 federal conviction for fraud and subsequent imprisonment. Wilson also had another trial scheduled to begin the day after his release. The Hartford (CT) Courant ran a detailed article titled “High-Caliber Expert, High-Profile Fraud” on Mar. 26, 2006. The December 2006 issue of Forbes magazine carried a story about it titled “Smoking Gun.”

Suddenly, every deal Wilson so much as sniffed at, every caption on every one of the gorgeous photos in all of his 42 books became suspect. And the Wilson-related acquisitions of many individuals and highly respected museums quickly became suspicious as well.

Apparently, no one checked Doc’s genealogy because his only sibling died in infancy, and thus he had no nephews. To believe someone’s claim that his tuberculosis-ridden, rail-thin 5′ 2″ Uncle Doc, who made his living seated at the gambling tables, told him this 13″-long hogleg was the gun he used all through his days in the West, including at the 1881 O.K. Corral shootout, is ludicrous.

In response to my inquiry, Mr. Kopec stated that he had already examined #11301 and “it was a wreck.”

Victims And Lessons

So it appears The Autry got taken on their 11301, and trustingly based on that, the Franklin Mint went on to flim-flam their own customers with their replica of the Autry gun during the 1980s. As for me? Yeah, well …

Strangely enough, Franklin Mint replicas of the “Holliday” revolver sell for more on eBay than real, firing, used Ubertis bring at gun shows. Cheapskate me, in early 2024, I finally scored one at a local coin/jewelry/gun shop at a reasonable price.

When it comes to lack of expertise regarding Colt SAAs, my own was pretty abysmal at first, too. I have since spent a huge amount of money on more books for Colt collectors and spent untold hours online, plus conversations with Colt collectors at gun shows to learn a few things. At first I was pleased to discover my 11301’s cylinder was the correct diameter of 1.6505″ and the frame window was 1.671″, well within tolerances for a genuine Colt. The Mint model’s dimensions were 1.670 and 1.695″, just right for a Uberti.

However, the big reveal was learning that Colts have a recoil plate in their frames, while Ubertis merely have a simple hole in the frame for the firing pin to peen larger. My 11301 has no recoil plate. So if it’s not a real Colt with faked serial numbers, but rather some sort of fake Colt, what is it? Where did it come from? Whodunit?

Everything Wilson owned was seized and sold to pay his creditors and victims. He passed on Dec. 10, 2016, at age 77. I wonder if his Ferrari was even the real deal, or just another fake to impress his guests back in the day.

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