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Don't bid until you see the whites of their eyes
By adamg on Thu, 10/31/2019 - 9:18am
Bearing Arms reports that the musket first fired by a colonial at the Battle of Bunker Hill recently sold at auction for $492,000.
An anonymous buyer snapped up the historical item after it was put up for auction by the family of Private John Simpson, which had held onto the Dutch Type III musket over the centuries.
Via Le Sabot.
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Comments
I hope it winds up in a
I hope it winds up in a museum and not in some rich person's personal collection an a commodity to be be resold at auction in a few years. Too many historical artifacts and works of art get traded around like that and it's sad the public loses the opportunity to see such things because some rich toff always has them locked away in storage purely as an investment.
No. It's okay to that musket to be in a private collection.
Many collectors do loan objects of value to museums. And many collectors take as good or better care of those rare antiques.
On the other hand, just because an item is given to a museum, doesn't mean that the museum will keep it forever, or even put it on display to the public. Museums only have so much display space. And many items end up being sold by museums to fund other projections. For instance, the Shelburne Museum in Vermont sold five Impressionist paintings out of their collection and the Berskhire Museum is selling artwork, including a Norman Rockwell painting for funds.
It Belongs In A Museum
It Belongs In A Museum
Baloney
Typically, nobody actually knows who fired first, or who died first, at Lexington or Bunker Hill (Breed's Hill?) or almost any "gunpowder battle" of that era. There were no videos, most of the starting events happened almost simultaneously, and nobody had time to focus on the wounded until later, much less know who died first.
Of course, if you own a musket of that era you're going to claim things about it, as that greatly inflates its value.
"There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him."
I read it as the first time
I read it as the first time the musket was fired was at the Battle of Bunker/Breed's Hill.