Napoleonic weapons for sale
Listings for sale
No piece is listed in this category at the moment.
Have one to sell? Listing is free, and payment is secure. List a piece
Guides for these pieces
- Identifying a French bayonetChassepot, Gras, Lebel, Berthier, MAS 36: the blade section gives the model, the numbers tell you whether the piece is still matched.
- Selling militaria in France: what is allowed, what is notMedals, helmets, bayonets, deactivated weapons, inert ammunition: what may be sold freely, what is prohibited, and what to check before listing.
- Caring for military leather, textile and metal: the minimum ruleDry leather, moth-eaten wool, rusted metal: what to do, what never to do, and why doing nothing is often the right call.
Collecting Napoleonic Wars weapons
The regulation firearm dominates this category, and one model comes up again and again: the model 1777 infantry musket corrected in Year IX, produced in more than a million examples by the factories of Charleville, Saint-Étienne, Maubeuge and Tulle. That abundance changes the logic of buying. The model is not rare in itself. What is rare is a complete, consistent example that has kept its original configuration.
Dating by the lock and the proof marks
The lock carries the name of the factory, and that is where dating begins. The same musket was made under the Empire and then under the Restoration, the imperial inscription giving way to the royal one. A royal lock on a weapon sold as Napoleonic is not an anomaly: it places production after the Empire, which is not the same thing. The inspection marks struck on the barrel, the lock and the furniture should form a consistent set. Markings very different in appearance, style and depth indicate an assembly of parts from different sources, by far the most frequent case on this market.
The flintlock reconversion trap
The commonest trap remains reconversion to flintlock. Many of these weapons were converted to percussion in the middle of the nineteenth century, then turned back to flint much later to please collectors. Look around the touch hole and the pan: a plugged hole, reworked welding, wood recut and then filled along the lock, screws whose slots lack the wear of the rest of the weapon. A recent cock or frizzen shows in the sharpness of its edges and the regularity of its surface. The same reservations apply to pistols and cavalry carbines, often shortened, reassembled or completed with later parts.