Moose Droppings

$125 for an Old Broken Musket Turns Into a Big Find

Dec 20, 2006 @ 10:28 pm by Moose

A long forgotten gun hanging in an antique shop has lead to found treasure for Scott Musser.

In July, Musser’s wife, Lisa, spotted the musket hanging high up on the wall of an antique store, Pearl of Africa. The $150 price tag was too good to be true and Musser says he wrote off the gun as a fake.
Upon inspection, though, he realized the gun could be worth a good bit of money and haggled the price down to $125.
Musser took it home and pledged to clean up the artifact. He turned to Bates, a gunsmith he found online, when other repairman said they couldn’t fix the musket without damaging it. Bates thought he could and was willing to give it a go, Musser says.

The gun a 1740’s musket has some historical value but it is what they found inside that really adds to the value. It was not unusual for people to store valuables inside the stocks of guns for safe keeping. 6 Months after Scott purchased the gun he had a gunsmith open it up to see what he could do to restore the gun and that’s where they find items belonging to the family that owned the gun.

To be exact, Musser and Douglas Bates, the gunsmith, had discovered four gold, seven silver and six copper coins. Musser says the owner of the Belgian-made musket had also jammed a will and a $5 silk note inside a fragile leather pouch, hidden behind a metal plate on the butt of the stock centuries ago.
The coins date to 1743. The will is dated Jan. 20, 1848. It’s signed by a New Jersey man, the son of a patriot who died in the War of 1812. The family — the Hillmans — has a rich history with ties to the Revolutionary War, maybe even the French and Indian War, Musser says.
Now more than 250 years old, the gun isn’t in pristine condition. A musket ball is lodged in the barrel and Musser repaired the bayonet this fall, a decision that led to the gold’s discovery when the two men first disassembled the gun three weeks ago.
Still, early estimates appraise the gun and collection around $20,000, Musser says.

Not bad for a $125 investment. Here is a link to the rest of the story. So this Christmas when your at those family gatherings if there is an old musket hung on the mantle you may want to pull it down and take it apart to see if it contains some long lost family treasure.