The Various European Wheellock Saxon Sporting Gun No. 8379 is a Antique first produced in 1539. It carries a scarcity score of 91/100 based on tracked survey data, with 4 active listings currently on the secondary market and a global benchmark price of $102,549.
This wheellock sporting gun dates from 1539, placing it among the earliest generation of firearms to employ the wheellock ignition system, a mechanism developed in the German-speaking lands during the first decades of the sixteenth century. The wheellock replaced the burning slow match of the earlier matchlock with a spring-driven steel wheel that, when released by the trigger, spun against a piece of iron pyrite held in the jaws of the cock, generating a shower of sparks to ignite the priming powder; this innovation allowed, for the first time, a firearm to be carried loaded and ready to fire and operated with one hand, making it especially suited to mounted use and to hunting. Saxony, a center of skilled metalworking and gunmaking in the period, produced sporting and hunting guns of this type for the nobility and wealthy huntsmen, for whom fine wheellock arms served both practical and prestige functions. As an early Renaissance-period firearm, this piece represents a formative stage in the technical evolution of European small arms, predating the widespread adoption of the flintlock by more than a century.