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cannon
- Thread starter PTK
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Can you submit some detailed photos?
sent, in thread.
Yes I did. I'm not an expert by any means but I have been looking at cannon's for quite a while. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a response to your value question. You might want to repost with the photos.
From what I've seen over the years your cannon could sell for $3-5K. And could be over $10K to the right person.
Thanks! He paid 10K for the set in 1994...
Youngblood
40 Cal
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Wow i would have thought in 94 they would be cheaper. Nice gun and well taken care of too. 
How big is the bore size?
How long is the tube?
How tall are the wheels?
What kind of wood is the carriage made of?
At the vent hole, is there any kind of vent liner there or just a hole drilled through the bronze and into the steel sleeve?
How big is the bore size?
How long is the tube?
How tall are the wheels?
What kind of wood is the carriage made of?
At the vent hole, is there any kind of vent liner there or just a hole drilled through the bronze and into the steel sleeve?
Not sure, but the bore has a steel sleeve, at least 3 inches, tube about 3.5 to 4 feet, wheels probably 36 inches, has a vent liner for the primers. Hope the pictures can give you more information, I can always take more if you wish.
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Why not just put a price on the very nice cannon and list it for sale? No cost to list or sell on forum. Start price might be high but maybe you will get offer that would be acceptable.
I have one of their catalogs from 1992 and at that time only their full-size bronze barrels could be had with a steel liner. Competition shooters did not prefer bronze barrels with a liner. Oddly, a bronze barrel with a liner was a cheaper version of barrels because they could provide the liner to the foundry to cast the barrel around it. This eliminated the step of having to drill and polish the bore of the rough casting. A bronze barrel without a liner was more expensive since they had to both bore it plus grind and polish down the entire rough casting but again as mentioned completion shooters wanted the more expensive all bronze version. In other words, even though it sound counter-intuitive, a bronze barrel with steel liner was the budget version of the barrel without a liner
All of their ductile iron barrels came with steel liners as a safety factor because cast iron is so brittle.
A half-scale Napoleon barrel without liner purchased with a carriage was $1900. Since they did not list the cheaper version with a steel liner in the 1992 catalog, I have no idea of the cost
A matching 1/2 scale finished carriage was $4300
That would bring the total cost to $6200 minus any loading implements which might add another $500 max. Then one has to figure the cost of shipping unless one would pick it up in person. Unless the costs rose dramatically in 1993 that cost of $10k sounds a bit high. $7k might be more realistic as the original price. As for a current price $7k entered into an inflation calculator comes out to $15k for 2024. However, finding a willing buyer with that kind of money
for what is essentially a fun toy and oversized doorstop will be the problem. I think you'll be lucky to get $10 to $12
Finding an appropriate venue to list something like this is the real problem.
The high cost of professionally made cannons is why many people with home shop tools try to freelance it themselves. The results are usually poor to total suckage because they never bother to acquire any accurate plans.
I have collected small-scale cannons for over 50 years, but until recently, my largest was 1/4th scale. Then, I got lucky two years back and found this 1/3 scale 1861 Parrott with a South Bend Replicas barrel on Armslist. The seller's late father had built it from scratch and had won several shooting competitions with it. Being cast of iron, the barrel has a one-inch seamless steel liner for a bore. The father had intended to build a matching limber but had only built the wheels and axle housing so that was included in the deal along with all the other stuff shown. The gun had it listed at $2500 for over six months without a bite. He had no interest in it and his wife wanted out of the house. I got him down to $1500. I had to drive about 600 miles to pick it up but it was certainly worth it.
There is a guy selling a quality 1/4 scale Napoleon that he builds using a solid brass/bronze Brooks barrel for $6200 Since a 1/2 scale would require 8 times the volume of material to build your price might be very fair but at the same time very hard to get due to the limited market. With the massive decline of civil war reenacting over the past few decades the interest in muzzle-loading cannons has also dwindled.
\
Link:
Michael Elledge's cannons and carriages
I'd love to have your cannon but am unwilling to spend that kind of money nor do I have the room to house it appropriately. I already have a two-bedroom patio home filled with small cannons. I'll turn 80 next year so I'm about at a point of trying to sell all of my cannons instead of buying more. I'll probably use one of the big auction houses like RIA (Rock Island Auctions)
you've got to get some wider exposure to get the best price. Your average American today is having problems just dealing with the price of a dozen eggs
I see cannons occasionally listed on Guns International
Also eBay reaches a worldwide audience. and they have a section devoted to black powder cannons. You have to call it a signal cannon as if that's all it's for so eBay will ignore it. There's hardly a cannon listed that won't shoot a projectile but It's a hypocritical game that eBay plays so they tell themselves they aren't selling something that's actually a large firearm.
Now that I think of it, RIA might be the perfect way to sell your cannon. They tend to attract buyers with more money than good sense. You might contact them. I used to occasionally bid with them but at some point they began to attract too many nuevo collectors with deep pockets. While they deal mostly in collectible firearms, they do occasionally have cannons--both full-scale and small-scale--even tanks periodically. It's a gamble but you can always put a reserve price on your item so if it doesn't get there it won't sell. They just opened a new operation in Texas to get away from the Draconian anti gun laws recently enacted in Illinois.
Link: Rock Island Auctions
It's a shame that Cannon LTD went out of business since they carried a wide variety of cannons from full scale down to 1/8th scale and most sizes in between. They also offer some of these in kit form at a much lower price.
Here's the story of what happened according to what I read online: The husband and wife got divorced at some point, but she stayed involved in the business until she was diagnosed with cancer and eventually lost her battle with it. Then, just a few years later the husband was involved in a serious automobile accident and eventually died from his injuries. He was a hotrod enthusiast and that may have had something to do with his accident. In his catalog he stated that he would accept dragsters and hotrods as partial payment for cannons. The couple evidently had no children. and the estate couldn't find a buyer for the business so the company was dissolved and all the equipment was sold off.
Cheers
All of their ductile iron barrels came with steel liners as a safety factor because cast iron is so brittle.
A half-scale Napoleon barrel without liner purchased with a carriage was $1900. Since they did not list the cheaper version with a steel liner in the 1992 catalog, I have no idea of the cost
A matching 1/2 scale finished carriage was $4300
That would bring the total cost to $6200 minus any loading implements which might add another $500 max. Then one has to figure the cost of shipping unless one would pick it up in person. Unless the costs rose dramatically in 1993 that cost of $10k sounds a bit high. $7k might be more realistic as the original price. As for a current price $7k entered into an inflation calculator comes out to $15k for 2024. However, finding a willing buyer with that kind of money
for what is essentially a fun toy and oversized doorstop will be the problem. I think you'll be lucky to get $10 to $12
Finding an appropriate venue to list something like this is the real problem.
The high cost of professionally made cannons is why many people with home shop tools try to freelance it themselves. The results are usually poor to total suckage because they never bother to acquire any accurate plans.
I have collected small-scale cannons for over 50 years, but until recently, my largest was 1/4th scale. Then, I got lucky two years back and found this 1/3 scale 1861 Parrott with a South Bend Replicas barrel on Armslist. The seller's late father had built it from scratch and had won several shooting competitions with it. Being cast of iron, the barrel has a one-inch seamless steel liner for a bore. The father had intended to build a matching limber but had only built the wheels and axle housing so that was included in the deal along with all the other stuff shown. The gun had it listed at $2500 for over six months without a bite. He had no interest in it and his wife wanted out of the house. I got him down to $1500. I had to drive about 600 miles to pick it up but it was certainly worth it.
There is a guy selling a quality 1/4 scale Napoleon that he builds using a solid brass/bronze Brooks barrel for $6200 Since a 1/2 scale would require 8 times the volume of material to build your price might be very fair but at the same time very hard to get due to the limited market. With the massive decline of civil war reenacting over the past few decades the interest in muzzle-loading cannons has also dwindled.
\
Link:
Michael Elledge's cannons and carriages
I'd love to have your cannon but am unwilling to spend that kind of money nor do I have the room to house it appropriately. I already have a two-bedroom patio home filled with small cannons. I'll turn 80 next year so I'm about at a point of trying to sell all of my cannons instead of buying more. I'll probably use one of the big auction houses like RIA (Rock Island Auctions)
you've got to get some wider exposure to get the best price. Your average American today is having problems just dealing with the price of a dozen eggs
I see cannons occasionally listed on Guns International
Also eBay reaches a worldwide audience. and they have a section devoted to black powder cannons. You have to call it a signal cannon as if that's all it's for so eBay will ignore it. There's hardly a cannon listed that won't shoot a projectile but It's a hypocritical game that eBay plays so they tell themselves they aren't selling something that's actually a large firearm.
Now that I think of it, RIA might be the perfect way to sell your cannon. They tend to attract buyers with more money than good sense. You might contact them. I used to occasionally bid with them but at some point they began to attract too many nuevo collectors with deep pockets. While they deal mostly in collectible firearms, they do occasionally have cannons--both full-scale and small-scale--even tanks periodically. It's a gamble but you can always put a reserve price on your item so if it doesn't get there it won't sell. They just opened a new operation in Texas to get away from the Draconian anti gun laws recently enacted in Illinois.
Link: Rock Island Auctions
It's a shame that Cannon LTD went out of business since they carried a wide variety of cannons from full scale down to 1/8th scale and most sizes in between. They also offer some of these in kit form at a much lower price.
Here's the story of what happened according to what I read online: The husband and wife got divorced at some point, but she stayed involved in the business until she was diagnosed with cancer and eventually lost her battle with it. Then, just a few years later the husband was involved in a serious automobile accident and eventually died from his injuries. He was a hotrod enthusiast and that may have had something to do with his accident. In his catalog he stated that he would accept dragsters and hotrods as partial payment for cannons. The couple evidently had no children. and the estate couldn't find a buyer for the business so the company was dissolved and all the equipment was sold off.
Cheers
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Very nice Dahlgren on the Marsilly carriage.!
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Thanks all, it's just a few of the over 50 or so I have. The Dahlgren is from South Bend Replicas and I have two of them. They are a 1/8 scale model of the 9 inch Dahlgren that was used by the Union Navy on so many ships and ironclads. It also has a 1-inch seamless steel liner. which is slightly out of scale at 1/8th but I guess the 1-inch liner was a catch-all in that size to use. Since the carriage is also cast from iron those babies weigh in at 67 lbs each. South Bend still carries them at $675 not including shipping.
However, I didn't buy them from South Bend but won them in a couple of different auctions listed on Proxybid. I have a permanent search on Proxybid for "cannon" so I get hits every other week or so. However, most of them are false positives such as Canon cameras and sometimes just big-bore pistols or rifles that the seller has listed as hand cannons. Anyway, I think that even including a 15% buyer's premium and shipping I got out for less than $400 on each.
They are a lot of fun to shoot and due to their weight, they don't roll back as much as the field models. However, I lost my location to shoot last year when my friend who had a nice bit of unused farm land in the country had to be committed to a care facility for Alzheimer's. His wife sold the property. right after to help pay for his expenses. That's another problem I have with my cannons now is that I have no place to shoot. The only local outdoor range is run by the State game and fish but they don't allow cannons. Unfortunately, none of the rest of my friends own any land that isn't inside the city limits.
I don't mean to berate people who spend big money on cannons, Hell, I've been one of them. It's sort of in my blood. I was in the US Army Field artillery and spent all of 1969 in Vietnam---mostly in the field as a forward observer but eventually in various positions in my battery when I finally got pulled back to the base.
My unit was a self-propelled heavy arty battery which consisted of two SP 8-inch howitzers and two SP 175mm guns. The Army retired the Heavy units
several years after the war in favor of only 105mm and SP 155mm units. With new ammunition technologies, the 155mms can now do just about anything that the old heavies could do when they were in use.
Cheers
