SASS Stories, the Colt Super Match .38 Super & Cowboy Action History

The May 30th Auction: Trench Guns, a Rare Colt Super Match, and 740 Lots

The May 30th auction at the Highway 39 Event Center in Orange County is three weeks out, the catalog is live with 740 lots, and if you have a habit of bailing early on auction nights, this is the show to break it. The listing pictures are up and bidding is already running. Good firearms are scattered from the first lot to the last.

The headline item right now is a 1930s Colt Super Match in .38 Super, near-pristine condition, sitting at $9,750 in pre-bidding at time of broadcast. It is an extraordinarily rare configuration. Colt built National Match and Match-grade 1911s in .45 ACP, but a factory Super Match in .38 Super is a different animal entirely. The fit, finish, and hand work on these guns from that period represent American manufacturing at its best, and this example looks practically new. The top three bids in the entire catalog are all on .38 Supers, which says something direct about where collector interest sits right now.

The trench gun collection is another story. The catalog holds a solid-frame Winchester Model 97 trench gun, a Winchester Model 12 trench gun, a Savage trench gun, and a Vietnam-era Ithaca Model 37 in trench configuration. The solid-frame 97 is where most of the attention is going; takedown models exist and sell, but the solid frames pull the serious money. Four distinct trench guns in one catalog is not something you see often.

The Highway 39 Event Center sits on State College Boulevard in Anaheim, ten minutes from the Orange store and a short drive from Angel Stadium. The auction runs May 30th. The full catalog is browsable now through Gunslinger Auctions, with direct pre-bidding access on HiBid and Proxibid.

Cowboy Action Sunday: The Double R Bar and the Indiana Jones Revolvers

Jeff shot a match at the World Famous Double R Bar Regulators in the Victor Valley, and Mark ran his guns through the Canyon Oaks Shooting Club in Panorama. Two different clubs, two very different approaches to the sport.

The Double R Bar ran six stages, with light turnout for the holiday. One stage used a sequence called a goomer pile, which reverses the standard military sweep. The military sweep runs left-left-right-left across two targets; the goomer pile goes right-right-right-left-right. Jeff had no trouble with the sequence. His trouble came from a sticking case during extraction, most likely a burr in the chamber, and the effort to clear it left him with a split knuckle still barking ten hours later by showtime. He ran the timer for most of the afternoon on top of shooting, which did nothing good for a foot problem he was already managing. The shooting went fine. Everything else cooperated less.

Mark went old school at Canyon Oaks. The club runs longer target distances than most modern SASS matches, puts out Texas stars, poppers, and running rabbits, and stacks enough steel to give a serious shooter something real to work against. The club gave him clearance to bring two firearms that have no legitimate place in a cowboy action match but made for a worthwhile afternoon: a Smith & Wesson Model 1917 and a Colt New Service, both double-action revolvers, both roughly 120 years old.

Those guns earned their history during the First World War. When the United States entered the conflict, the 1911 pistol was in service but production had not come close to keeping pace with the four million soldiers being shipped to France. Colt and Smith & Wesson both had large-frame revolvers available, and both were hurriedly rechambered from their original calibers to .45 ACP so American troops would have a handgun that used the same ammunition as the 1911. The resulting revolvers went to the front alongside it and served through the second war as well.

Mark’s Colt New Service carried an extra chapter. The frame bore British engraving to a Lieutenant Shaw of the Royal Lancers, which places it in the early stages of the war when Britain was arming itself by any available means. It had been rechambered to .455 Webley for British service, then rechambered again to .45 Colt at some later point, leaving a revolver with three caliber histories in the same frame. The Smith & Wesson 1917 is also, for those who want a visual reference, the revolver Indiana Jones carried in all four films. Colt built a nearly identical version in the New Service. Unless the manufacturer’s name appears on the grips, the two are difficult to tell apart on screen or in photographs.

At the distances Canyon Oaks was running, the double-action gave no meaningful advantage over a single-action. These guns are too archaic to be fast and not particularly comfortable to hold. The value is in putting your hands on something that served American and British troops in two world wars and understanding, through the shape of the grip and the weight of the cylinder, exactly what those engineers had not yet figured out.

Kevin's Return and September's Nearly Full Catalog

Kevin is back. He spent several months recovering from knee surgery, and his return drew a warm reception from the audience watching the stream. Jeff noted with some dry amusement that he was back on his feet two weeks after heart surgery years ago and it took five months to bounce back from a knee. Some procedures do not read the calendar.

September is filling up fast. About 200 consignment spots remain, and a couple from Las Vegas confirmed they are bringing in 75 firearms the following week. At that pace the September catalog could close before summer ends. If you have guns to consign, the window is closing. Gunslinger Auctions handles intake at both the Orange and Azusa locations. June 1st also marks Jeff’s 28th year behind the counter, a run that started on that date in 1998 with five new guns and the rest of his personal safe emptied onto the shelves.

How the .38 Super Came to Be

The .38 Super sitting at the top of the May catalog did not come from nowhere. The cartridge grew from the .38 ACP, introduced around 1900. The two rounds look nearly identical. The difference is powder charge and velocity: the Super hits considerably harder and faster, and loading .38 Super ammunition into a pistol chambered only for .38 ACP will leave you with a parts kit.

The FBI was the catalyst. This was the Bonnie and Clyde era, and law enforcement had a structural problem. American cars of the early 1930s were built with heavy steel doors, and a .38 Special round from a standard police revolver would not reliably punch through one. Bonnie Parker ran a Browning Automatic Rifle cut down to carbine length. George “Baby Face” Nelson had a full-auto 1911 on him when he was shot dead after killing two federal agents. Standard police loadouts were badly outmatched.

The .38 Super answered part of that problem. Against car doors and hard cover, it offered meaningfully better penetration than .45 ACP in a 1911-pattern frame agents were already trained on. The .357 Magnum followed from the same pressure. Introduced in 1935, it was specifically engineered to penetrate heavy automobile bodies and the early bulletproof vests that bootleggers and bank robbers of the Depression era had started using. The story that the .357 was designed to stop car engines by punching through the block has enough basis in fact to hold up: law enforcement wanted a round that could end a pursuit by destroying the vehicle, not just the driver.

That history is part of why the Colt Super Match in the May catalog commands the attention it does. It was built at the height of an era when American gunmakers were engineering their work against real-world problems, and the craftsmanship they put into it was good enough to make the gun worth owning nearly a century later.

California 2A: Why the June Primary Matters

The California Rifle and Pistol Association maintains a voter guide for gun owners who want to know how candidates and ballot measures stack up on Second Amendment issues before they walk into the booth. It covers judges, statewide races, and local measures, and it is current. The guide is at crpa.org. CRPA membership is worth a look as well if you are not already in.

The Gunslingers made the point plainly: California gun law does not change at the federal level first. It changes in Sacramento, in county ordinances, and on primary ballots that too many gun owners skip because they have decided their vote does not matter. Abstaining is not a neutral act. The June primary has races that will shape the regulatory environment for California gun owners for years, and the CRPA guide identifies which candidates have a record worth supporting.

Mauser Broomhandle: What "Refurbished" Actually Means

Two Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistols are on the May 30th catalog, and caller Michael raised a question worth unpacking: the listings describe them as refurbished, not refinished, and that distinction matters depending on what you want the gun for.

A refurbished C96 has typically had its barrel replaced. The original Broomhandle was chambered in 7.63mm Mauser, also called .30 Mauser, a round that is not impossible to source today but is not cheap and not stocked everywhere. Both of these examples have been re-barreled to 9mm Parabellum, a round available at any shop for around $20 a box. If originality is the goal and you are buying for a collection, the re-barrel is a devaluing modification. If you want to shoot it, the re-barrel is an upgrade, and the price on these reflects that: both are selling at shooter grade, not collector grade.

Refinishing is something else entirely. A refinished gun has had its metal work redone. A refurbished gun has had its mechanics updated. Both terms get used loosely in the used-firearms market, and it is always worth asking which applies before bidding. For these two lots, the answer is clear: re-barreled to 9mm, mechanically sound, priced accordingly.

Bidding on the May 30th catalog, including both Broomhandles and the rest of the 740 lots, is live now through HiBid and Proxibid.

Battle Rifle at the Alamo: A Fun With Guns Hypothetical

Caller Sean posed the scenario: you have a time machine, two hours, and your choice of any modern battle rifle. You drop into the Alamo on March 5, 1836, with 200 frontiersmen against Santa Anna’s 4,000 troops. No grenades. Train the defenders and hold the line. Which rifle?

Mark chose the AK-47. Simple to operate, forgiving under hard conditions, trainable in the time available. The argument against it: whether men who have never seen a gas-operated autoloader can absorb the operating concept in two hours, and whether magazine resupply holds across multiple waves.

Jeff went with a FAL in .308 Winchester. The reasoning: those defenders were holding a fixed position against massed formations coming from distance. A .308 reaches further and hits harder at extended range than 7.62×39, and against several thousand troops spread across open ground, effective range changes the math significantly. Getting Santa Anna in the first minutes with a long shot was probably the better tactical option anyway. The Alamo itself was indefensible by any conventional measure; the walls were three feet high in places and crumbling, and the garrison was outnumbered roughly 20 to one. That they held as long as they did reflects as poorly on Santa Anna’s generalship as it does well on the men inside.

Sean’s own answer was a Remington Rolling Block in 7mm Mauser. His argument: a single-shot falling-block action is something frontiersmen could learn in minutes, and a 7mm at distance could reach the artillery before it reached the walls. It is a defensible call.

Sean also asked about cowboy aliases. Jeff shoots as HUD, after the Paul Newman picture. Mark goes by Frederick Jackson Turner, FJT or just Jackson to the people who know the name. Co-host Jimi goes by Jimi the Gent.

Golden Era: The Stampede Match and the Stories That Stayed

The Primm casino properties are closing. Buffalo Bills shut down some time ago and the last operating property out there is finishing up. For anyone who shot the Stampede match in Jean, Nevada, that news lands differently than it does for the rest of the world.

The Stampede ran at the Gold Strike, a casino about eight miles east of the California border on Interstate 15, with the shooting range set up directly behind the building. You parked, walked to your room, and were on the range in two minutes. Fourteen stages over two days. The match drew 550 shooters or more at its peak, vendors lined up across the grounds, and the dinner afterward was a whole separate production at the Primm casino across the freeway. It was one of the best cowboy action matches ever run anywhere, and the stories from it have never stopped circulating.

One stage became famous because of a shooter named Stony Burke. Stony was fast, genuinely fast, and the stage was designed to punish that kind of speed in exactly the right way. You started seated, holding a shot glass of liquid. On the beep, you set it down without spilling. Knock it over: ten-second procedural penalty. Draw your first pistol and put five rounds on the pistol target. Second pistol, five more. Then rifles. The pistol target was a full-sized steel grizzly bear about 15 feet away, weighing close to 500 pounds. You could see it from a mile and a half out. It was not a difficult target. Stony drew and fired so fast that his first three shots went into the dirt in front of the bear before his sight picture had caught up with his trigger finger. Three rounds in the dirt on a 500-pound steel bear at 15 feet. The sport still calls it Stony B’ing it, and the lesson gets retold at matches to this day.

Jeff had a story from the same match, different year, involving a wind running somewhere near 100 miles an hour and the charcoal briquette poppers. Standard shotgun poppers throw clay pigeons or soda cans six feet in the air when you hit them. These poppers had extra lift, and on a calm day the briquettes were going 60 to 100 feet up. In a 100-mph wind, they left the popper, climbed, made a hard right turn, and disappeared somewhere toward New Mexico. Jeff was 12 stages into a clean match with two left. He ran a Winchester Model 97 as a lefty, which suits the action well because it extracts to the right and away from your face. He decided he was not going to wait for the briquettes to climb and drift. He shot each one about two feet off the ground, before they had enough air to go anywhere. Eight targets, eight hits. Out of 550 shooters at that match, three finished clean. He was one of them.

There was a stage built around a train car set with windows, one target visible through each window. In the early years of SASS, the traveling rule did not yet exist. Today, once you cock the hammer you plant your feet and shoot. Back then you could move while loaded, and this stage required it. Jeff was running left-handed, working right to left through the windows, which put the mechanical advantage of the action in his favor. He was doing well until he kicked a rock. The range grew rocks the way most ground grows grass; the locals insisted the soil was actively producing new ones every season. He tripped going from the third window to the fourth, lost his footing completely, and got caught in mid-fall by the timer operator, who grabbed him, got him vertical, and shoved him back into the stage. He never brought the handgun down. He kept it indexed toward the targets the whole time and finished the stage. Everyone watching was furious that nobody had a camera running.

The dinner after each Stampede was at the Primm casino on the far side of the freeway, reached by tram from Buffalo Bills. One year, about 30 cowboy action shooters dressed head to toe in frontier kit boarded that tram alongside a group of Japanese tourists. A shooter named Ivory Jack stepped on last. He was about 6’2″, built to match, and dressed like he had walked straight out of an 1880s saloon. He looked around, let the moment sit, and said: “Put your hands up. This is a holdup.” The tourists were delighted. The story still gets told at matches.

Jeff’s line on all of it: “That was when cowboy shooting was at its zenith, and people wonder why we stay. Come back, folks. Bring it on back.”

The sport is still running. End of Trail, the SASS World Championship, draws competitors every year. Local clubs like the World Famous Double R Bar Regulators and the Canyon Oaks Shooting Club keep weekly competition alive in Southern California. New shooters are welcome, the gear is available, and the people who make the sport what it is are still showing up every Sunday. The Stampede is history. The sport does not have to be.

Stories from the Counter: Hidden Guns and Found Cash

Caller Dan from Fullerton brought one. An acquaintance bought a house 25 years ago, found a box nailed to a floor joist under the crawl space about a decade in, cut it open in the garage, and came out with a Colt Python .357 Magnum, a .25 ACP Colt, and $3,000 in cash, all apparently purchased around 1966. The guns were in the original Colt Python box, unfired. The $3,000 is gone. The Python stayed. The priorities were correct.

Jeff had a counter story to match. An elderly customer came in carrying a collection that had turned up under his couch when his family was getting ready to move him to a care facility. The group included a Browning Hi-Power, a Colt Python, and a Smith & Wesson Model 29. Jeff ran the paperwork, waited the required 30 days, put the guns out on release day, and all of them sold within the hour. Then the DOJ hold notifications started coming in, one after another: every gun in the batch had been reported stolen.

The customer had not filed a false report. He had lost track of the guns years earlier, called them in stolen, and then never followed up when they turned up. There was nothing fraudulent about any of it. What followed was a long day of driving the man to multiple police departments across multiple jurisdictions to get each firearm cleared. The customer had the guns, the customer had filed the original report, and law enforcement had to reconcile both facts in three different counties.

The money story came from a different job. A longtime customer of more than 20 years passed away and his wife asked that the collection be cleared out. Jeff and a colleague loaded the shop’s U-Haul two and a half trips over. During the work, a colleague found a red bag that looked like a first-aid kit. It held $98,000 in cash. Jeff took it home, did not sleep, and spent the night running the math on whether the count was short and whether someone would later say two thousand dollars had walked out with him. He returned the bag the next morning. The widow took it from him, set it on the couch without opening it, and went on with the conversation. No count, no receipt, no acknowledgment. Just the bag on the couch and the next item of business.

What's Ahead at the Shops

Monday brings the ammo estate pickup, described as five to ten tons, heading to the Azusa store. The prior run from the same estate produced 135 firearms. The ammunition had been in a hidden compartment in the garage, concealed behind stacked inventory until someone measured the interior and noticed the dimensions stopped adding up. Cases across calibers, arriving this week at the Azusa store on GunBroker if you have been needing to restock.

Mark is wrapping a ghostwriting project, an autobiography for a longtime figure in the car world, and then turning to festival season with his band. The Bullitt Mustang is also getting sorted for a Steve McQueen tribute show in June.

The May 30th auction is the main event. Bidding through HiBid and Proxibid is live now. Seven hundred forty lots, trench guns across four manufacturers, a rare 1930s Colt Super Match .38 Super with early bids approaching five figures, and good firearms throughout. Check the full catalog at Gunslinger Auctions before the live event on May 30th.