The Nicolas-Noël Boutet Boutet Pistol Directoire Period Single #93 is a Antique first produced in 1797. It carries a scarcity score of 98/100 based on tracked survey data, with 4 active listings currently on the secondary market and a global benchmark price of $72,708.
This Boutet pistol was produced by Nicolas-Noel Boutet, director of the Manufacture de Versailles, whose workshop supplied both standard military arms and exceptionally refined presentation firearms to the French government during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Dating to 1797, during the French Directoire, this piece reflects the transitional political period between the Revolution's early upheaval and Napoleon's later consolidation of power, a time when Boutet's Versailles workshop was already producing arms of state-sponsored quality for military and diplomatic purposes. Boutet's work is distinguished by exceptional craftsmanship in barrel forging, lock mechanism finishing, and decorative metalwork that set French flintlock pistols of this era apart from more utilitarian contemporary military arms. As a documented product of one of the most celebrated gunmaking workshops of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, this pistol represents a high point of late eighteenth-century European firearms craftsmanship.