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HISTORY: THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

This book is about history, but it is about history through the lens of collecting Colt firearms. As such, it encompasses wars and murders – as if they were mutually exclusive – fortunes made, friendships betrayed … in short, the entire spectrum of the human comedy. Nevertheless, this particular compilation is narrowly focused on products, hard goods, and the prices we pay for them.

Before I began studying Colt firearms I had no idea of the controversies, mysteries and unresolved questions surrounding virtually every part of every gun listed in this volume. That amuses and puzzles me, because it seems as though it should be entirely straightforward: X gun was first built in X year with X features for X reasons or to address X needs. But this is an illusion; these determinations only seem straightforward. What I have learned this past year is that every facet of every action involved in making something new – even something as hard and factual and physical as a gun – becomes the subject of an historical obsession. Actually, I like that.

Almost nothing is straightforward in collecting Colt firearms – and the older the gun, the more complex its history becomes. Records are incomplete; factories burn; new models are stolen or pirated; guns are faked; financing fails; collectors with dubious character alter guns or just lie; owners die or just change their mind. Critical spellings are typed incorrectly and passed on for generations. People forget. And all this complexity ultimately means that it is more difficult to make a good decision about investing.

Caveat emptor is the Latin expression. Buyer beware. It certainly applies to collecting. Stamps. Antiques. Firearms.

As a historian, I often wish my subjects were easier to understand, would hold still for analysis. I have been fortunate to write books about Lewis and Clark and their expedition to the Pacific; and about Ulysses S. Grant and his journey through the Civil War. And even those incredibly researched and well documented subjects have gray areas, mysteries. Why, for instance, did Meriwether Lewis – Thomas Jefferson’s personal secretary and the man Jefferson personally chose to lead the expedition – kill himself … or did he? Why did Grant, such a successful military commander, lead his presidential administration so poorly? Why was Sam Colt’s son, Caldwell, such a wastrel and dandy?

All of these questions are what make history and collecting fascinating. We know, as Agent Mulder in The X Files television show did, that somewhere “the truth is out there.”