Читать книгу Standard Catalog of Colt Firearms онлайн

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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.”

DOING OUR HOMEWORK

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So we know, secretly but absolutely, in our heart of hearts, that we should avoid the impulse to buy that John Wayne Commemorative at a neighborhood gun show. Of course we enjoyed the movie True Grit, but it does not make you closer to the quiet man to purchase this gun before checking it out and learning its history and speculating honestly about its potential. (And once we have realized that commemorative guns are somewhat like the endless multitude of fishing lures, designed to attract fishermen as well as fish, we can make intelligent decisions about those quirky limited editions.)