We recently had an estate sale to dispose of some of my late parent's belongings. The guy handling the sale was named Pat. The week before our sale, Pat handled another sale which included an original (not a reproduction) Charleville musket. Unfortunately it had been converted to cap lock somewhere in its lifetime, but that could have been nearly 200 years ago. I saw some pictures of it, and the condition appeared to be pretty good for a Revolutionary War era firearm.
I had too many unknowns in my budget, and no time to give it serious consideration, but I did ask Pat what it finally sold for. He said it was in the $350 range, due to the cap lock conversion. Can't imagine what it would have been had it not been converted.
Now that there has been time to catch my breath after our sale, and some of the budget unknowns have been resolved, I wish I had tried to acquire it. Think of the history that thing has seen. It would also been fantastic to show up at an Appleseed shoot with a musket that could have existed during the Revolutionary War.
Hector
I think $350 would have been a bargain for such a firearm.
I recently started paying attention to flintlocks and such - reproduction and otherwise. I must admit my focus has been on 1816 Springfields due to the fact that they were a common firearm used in the Texas Revolution (part of my heritage). The least expensive one I have found thus far is one that was converted to cap ignition. It was in the $600 range.
And, that's still cheap. We've got a Confederate rifle in our family, passes on from generation to generation. The value is something around $2000 last time I checked, which was around 20 years ago.