Cap Guns

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Cap Guns

     Growing up in the last century (Boy that sounds "old"), in the 1950's certainly was a different time. There were gender toys such as dolls for girls and trucks for boys, but had my sister ever thought to borrow my toys, I wouldn't have thought twice about lending her them.

     Of course, the "kids" in our family, as I used to call us al had toys. Michael and Brenda, "the twins" and the youngest Jay (10 years younger than me) would always have toys. Jay was born in 1958, so he was too young yet!. I was 10, and Brenda and Michael were 7.

    I had a cap pistol that was given to me in the the 1950's. My pistol was a 6-shooter. It had 2-part bullets. The bottom was where you placed the single cap, and the top was the "bullet". You loaded caps into 6 bullets, and then the bullets into the gun.  It took probably 4 minutes to load the caps and bullets, and then 20 seconds to shoot the  gun off! I usually played with the gun on Saturdays and Sundays, as I went to school the rest of the week. Needless to say, that built up a certain eagerness during the week to play with the gun. So at 6:30 A.M. each Saturday from spring to fall , I would be shooting off my gun. Since we lived in a street with triplexes on both sides, there was naturally an echo. The funny part, if you could call it that, was that the neighbours never complained!

   Today's post presents the early cap pistols from the 1870's-1930's.  Most of these were single-fire toy guns where a cap was placed on a flat part, and the hammer part struck the cap. The guns of course, were mostly cast iron and smaller than the later die cast guns. By the 1930's there were die-cast guns, that opened up to accept rolls of caps. An advancing mechanism would allow the firing of a cap, and then the advancement of the next "unshod" cap. You could fire off 50shots in about 1 minute of you were fast enough! I did have one of these roll cap guns, a derringer, and of course the 6-shooter that I mentioned before.

   I was fortunate to be able to find a  nice collection of guns that were sold through James D. Julia Inc., so that's what I'm presenting below. Most toy guns that I've seen having been sold at auction don't fetch the high prices of cast iron trucks or cars. I haven;lt searched enough, so I'm sure there are some super rare and in high demand toy guns!

I'm sure these 1880's or later guns are rarer and fetch higher prices than 

their later and newer cousins!

 2 guns missing their grips . I would assume that the grips either 

had metal or wood covers for the handles.

The set of guns above held rolls of caps. These could hold a roll of 50 caps or more, and a gearing mechanism would advance the spent cap, and set up for a fresh unfired cap.

     One thing that I've noticed on E-Bay is the fact that any toy gun going up for auction has to have a stuffed plastic plug at the end of the barrel. I'd comment on that, but that's politics,and I guess, that would be for another different blog for another time. This blog keeps me busy enough!

I've finally managed to catch up on my posts, and actually be  ahead by 2 days. I'm writing this on Friday November 16, 2012 for Sunday November 18, 2012. Not that I'm "overworked", but it's great to be ahead of writing.

Thanks as always for dropping by,

and have a great part of Sunday or any other day,

wherever you may be.

Stacey