Free Pistol with San Francisco Newspaper Subscription (1887)

Gun Watch ^ | 6 November, 2016 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Using guns as a marketing bonus has a long history in the United States.  Guns have always been valued.  A free firearm with a car or to open a bank account has been fairly common in the last few years.

The usual system, in our over regulated age, is to give a coupon to be redeemed at a gun shop, which has made a deal with the car dealership or the bank.

But things were simpler in 1887, when the San Francisco Chronicle a weekly, offered a pistol along with a years subscription, for $3.90.  That did not include mailing the paper.  If you lived where the paper was delivered, you could pay the delivery charges separately.  To have the paper mailed was another $5 a year, or about 10 cents a week.

When you use constant dollars to correct for inflation, $3.90 in 1887 would be $96 today.  If you use gold as as the standard, $3.90 was .195 ounces in 1887, or $253 at today's price of $1300 an ounce. It is still cheap for an inexpensive pistol and year of weekly newspapers in a major city.

The .38 S&W cartridge is still loaded.  The  H&R American Double Action advertised has a solid frame. It was stronger than many of the top break designs in common usage at the time. It is a pull pin design.  To load it, pull the cylinder pin and remove the cylinder.  Fill the chambers with cartridges, then replace the cylinder and the cylinder pin. Here is a picture of one in decent condition, chambered in .32 S&W long.

It is a simple, solid, design.  Old ones often have spring breakage, but parts can be found, and a gunsmith can make a replacement spring.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

[marktwain]

Firearms are often used as premimums for sales. They are a valued luxury item.

[dp0622]

What, they didn’t have toasters? :)

[Swordmaker]

What, they didn’t have toasters? :)

Well, the caliber was large enough that some bad guy you shot with it would be "toast."

[marktwain]

Sure they had toasters.

The toasters just did not use electricity.

http://www.toaster.org/museum.html

[mark3681]

I have one of the 32’s. Was probably my wife’s great-grandfather’s. They were from Baltimore.

[eartick]

I have one of these in my safe that belonged to my grandfather/father.

They carried it in their saddlebag.

Slab barrel pretty much polished off and the dressing on the pistol grips smoothed off but you can still see it.

Chambered in 38S&W.

Probably worth only $3.90 to a trader now but to me.....priceless.

[dp0622]

that was fascinating. Thank you. It’s amazing how people work with what they have.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Bttt

[marktwain]

One of the things that I have learned is that the people who came before us were generally at least as smart as us.

Usually they were smarter.

Study how people did things and worked in the past; you will see that they worked “smart”. They had to.

It was worth their lives.

If they did not work smart, they died.

The Hollywood image of “stupid” people in the past is bunk.

They just had less technology to work with.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

In the days before antibiotics, and bathing was not often done think about all the dirt, grit, bacteria, that would get carried into a wound by the bullet.

The .41 Rimfire derringer was such a gun. It was so low powered, it’s main form of killing was the infection caused by it.

[Celtic Conservative]

During the civil war it was the mark of a good commander if he tried to make sure his soldiers put on clean under clothes before a battle. The idea of infection was dimly understood, but the connection between unclean clothes and infection was understood by the better educated commanders.

CC