.62 cal. French rifle

[Jim T]

The bullet is TT#180.  A very cool .615" 3-ringer that was made at Watervliet for an imported French rifle.  The bullets are scarce, but the cartridges were unknown.  Until we started going through all of Dean's collection.  We found TWO cartridges!  He had long ago mis-listed them in another cartegory...long before he ever found the reference to the manufacture of these rounds at Watervliet.

Now one is mine!

[emike123]

Nice and nice of Dean not to make you bid for it at Reddings.  I still think he should sell some of his things to forum members directly before letting the great unwashed at them at auction.  Although I have no dog in the hunt, some folks here would welcome you influencing him on their behalf.  Get to work!

[Jim T]

I believe there may be a "bid or buy" option on certain items.

[ETEX]

Jim, if you look at my wish list and the list I sent about a month ago I think you will see the TT 180 on it.

[Pete George]

  Jim, as you know, I'm particularly interested in knowing where rare/oddball civil war projectiles got used.  For example, my book makes mention of the very few locations where 3.67" Sawyer shells were used, and the same info about "20-Pounder" Brooke shells.

  Please tell us whatever locations you know of where those US .62-caliber 3-groove Minies have been dug.

Regards,
Pete

[tom buckley]

The "French .62 rifle" these bullets and cartridges were intended for was the Belgian made copy of the French M1859 Short Rifle of which 10,000 were delivered by John Pondir in 1861. There was also a Prussian rifle musket, a variant of the M1839/55 that was also .615 caliber. If the Prussian guns were issued, with only 1,810 imported they might not have been, is there any reference to these cartridges issued for them?
OK, that's probably a dumb question since Dean would most likely have published the information if it exists, but I thought I'd ask. 

[ETEX]

Jim/Dean,

Is there not a way to run an auction on the forum with the choice and hard to get bullets prior to going through Redding's. I would think a fair price for an auction on this site would be to pay the minimal cost to run the forum for the rest of the year as the fee if Carl and Mike would agree. I believe you would get as good if not better prices than if offered through the Redding's auction site and would give the dedicated and hard core bullet collectors from this forum a shot at them first providing a quicker return on your sales and a large savings by not paying an auction house. Like Mike said I don't have a dog in this fight but there are several bullets I would like to obtain from Dean's collection but I do not visit or bid on items at any of the auction sites, in fact I don't even follow the auctions. Just a thought.

[CarlS]

I'd be happy to post them on our bullet commerce site for no fee to help everyone.  Jim and Dean feel free to reach out to me if interested and we'll work out a process to get them posted.

[Jim T]

Pete, the very few of these that I've seen are from Northern Virginia.  I'm sure there are more "out there" it's just that they are probably mixed in with boxes of .58s.