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August 5, 2013
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Up for auction on Gunbroker is a Colt 1911A1 that was shipped to a Winchester-Simmons store in 1928. Full disclosure – this is my gun on consignment.
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/783417825
I received a letter from the Colt factory (much like a Cody letter) stating it was shipped in May 1928. This is an interesting connection in that Simmons was a hardware company founded in the 1870s based in St. Louis. One of its core sayings was “If you can’t eat it, and it don’t pour or fold, it’s hardware”. In June 1922, Winchester and Simmons merged. I believe Simmons had stores in about 6 or 7 states at that point. But Winchester was supposedly interested in Walden Knife, a knife company that Simmons bought in the early 1900s. It was about this time that I think Winchester expanded its product offering to include knives. The “merged” retail stores were branded Winchester-Simmons. The partnership didn’t last, and Winchester and Simmons went their separate ways in 1929.
I know Winchester folks sometimes like to see other guns shipped to Winchester or some similar affiliation. So while this gun didn’t go to a factory for guard duty, it did get shipped to a Winchester retail store. To make this a bit more interesting (at least to Colt folks) is that this is an early 1911A1…most people would think that a 1928-dated gun is merely a 1911 model. But this gun was produced just a few years after Colt made the modifications that gave rise to the A1 designation.
Greg
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