Sold For $7,500
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From the personal collection of Richard Jarvis, the longtime president of Colt's Manufacturing Company — a Colt M1877 double-action ‘Lightning’ revolver, serial #39864, .38 Long Colt, 3 1/2" barrel. The checkered, hard rubber grips are in fine condition with only a few tiny handling marks scattered about, and minimal flattening of the checkering points. The interior of the right grip panel is marked with a previous owner’s initials: "WB."
Accompanied by a 1997 letter of authenticity from the Colt Manufacturing Company, confirming the revolver's configuration and listing it as a single shipment that left Colt’s Hartford factory on December 13, 1882, to R. W. H. Jarvis.
Richard William Hart Jarvis, a graduate of Yale Law School (Class of 1851), was an American lawyer, businessman, and industrialist (1829–1903). After practicing his profession for seven years in New York, in 1858, he began working for his brother-in-law, Samuel Colt. When on his deathbed in 1862, Colt passed the reins of the company to Jarvis, who assumed control of Colt's Manufacturing Company on the death of Elisha K. Root and served as the company's longest president, from 1865 to 1901. As president, Jarvis served the company from the end of the American Civil War through the early 20th century, seeing the transition from percussion revolvers to cartridge revolvers to semi-automatic pistols and machine guns.
This is an antique firearm and transfers with no federal restriction.
