The Colt Gatling Gun Model 1883 .45-70 is a WW1 first produced in 1904. It carries a scarcity score of 97/100 based on tracked survey data, with 3 active listings currently on the secondary market and a global benchmark price of $192,081.
This Colt-manufactured Gatling gun is a Model 1883 example chambered for the .45-70 Government cartridge, representing a late refinement of Richard Jordan Gatling's hand-cranked, multi-barrel rapid-fire weapon that Colt had produced under license since the 1860s. The Gatling gun was among the first practical rapid-fire weapons adopted by a major military, seeing service with United States forces from the Civil War era through the Spanish-American War, valued for its mechanical reliability compared to the temperamental early machine gun designs it eventually gave way to. By the time this gun was produced in 1904, the true automatic machine gun, epitomized by the Maxim design, was rendering hand-cranked systems like the Gatling obsolete, and the U.S. Army would formally retire the Gatling gun within the following decade. As one of the last hand-cranked rapid-fire weapons produced before the machine gun age fully arrived, this piece marks the close of an important transitional chapter in the development of automatic weaponry.
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