$3 Million Custom 1911: Cabot Stellar Fusion

Last updated August 2026 · By Nick Hall, custom 1911 enthusiast tracking Cabot Gun Company’s million-dollar builds

We love custom handguns at USA Gun Shop and nothing quite gets the juices flowing like a good custom 1911. But even we have to admit the Cabot Stellar Fusion is a touch on the decadent side. It is a working .45 built out of a meteorite that has been in space since the solar system formed, a frame forged by a Master Bladesmith, and grips cut from glass that a fireball made in the Sahara.

We first wrote this up in 2019. Coming back to it in 2026 we found four things in our own copy that were wrong, and two of them are contradicted by Cabot’s own website. So this is the corrected version, with the actual specification, the actual price story, and the actual reason nobody can tell you what it sold for.

Table of Contents

What the Cabot Stellar Fusion Actually Is

Cabot Guns is a machine shop in Pennsylvania that builds 1911s to tolerances borrowed from aerospace work. The Stellar Fusion is its show-off piece, and every major component is made of something that should not be a gun part.

• Slide: a meteoric-matrix billet cut from the Gibeon meteorite
• Frame: artisan Damascus steel in a wild zebra-striped pattern, forged by Master Bladesmith J. Neilson
• Sights: solid Gibeon meteorite, showing the Widmanstatten crystal pattern you only get in an iron that cooled over millions of years
• Grips: layered Libyan desert glass, which Cabot calls one of the rarest of the rare specimens
• Barrel: plated in 24 carat gold
• Caliber: .45 ACP, and it is a fully functional, precision-assembled pistol, not a display prop

Cabot publishes no price and no edition size for it. That matters more than it sounds, and we come back to it below.

Is This the Most Expensive Gun in the World?

Our 2019 answer was “almost certainly”. That was sloppy, because it quietly mixed up two different questions. The most expensive gun ever offered and the most expensive gun ever sold are not the same list, and the sold list wins.

• $6,030,313 is the record. That is the Colt Single Action Army that Sheriff Pat Garrett used to kill Billy the Kid, at Bonhams in August 2021.
• $5,875,000 bought Henry rifle serial number 1 at Rock Island Auction in June 2026, a record for a rifle.
• $4,500,000 was the asking price on Cabot’s own two-gun Big Bang set in 2016, and asking is the operative word.

So the honest framing is this. The Stellar Fusion is plausibly the most expensive new production handgun any maker has put in front of buyers. It is nowhere near the most expensive gun ever sold, and the guns that beat it are beaten-up 19th century revolvers whose value is entirely provenance. We ranked those properly in the 10 most expensive guns ever sold at auction.

Stone, Gold and Glass

We are not joking. Most of this gun is made from space metal, natural glass and gold. Because why not.

The Meteorite Is 4.5 Billion Years Old. It Did Not Land 4.5 Billion Years Ago.

This is the correction we owe you, because our 2019 copy said the meteor “breached the Earth’s atmosphere 4.5 billion years ago” and that is two different facts welded together.

The Gibeon is about as old as the solar system, which is where the 4.5 billion figure comes from. It did not arrive here then. It fell in prehistoric Namibia, roughly thirty thousand years ago, and Cabot estimates it weighed around 26 metric tons when it hit the atmosphere. An English captain named J. E. Alexander collected samples near the Fish River in 1836 and sent them to London, where John Herschel confirmed they came from space.

Here is the part we like best. The Nama people had already been working that iron into tools and spear heads for generations before anyone in Europe knew what it was. The Gibeon strewn field is the largest on Earth, an ellipse roughly 390km long by 120km wide. People have been making weapons out of this meteorite for a very long time. Cabot is just the first to make one with a slide stop.

Glass From a Fireball, Not From a Lost Forest

The grips are Libyan desert glass from the Great Sand Sea, formed about 30 million years ago when something came in hot enough to turn sand into glass. It is the yellow-green stuff, and it carries osmium and iridium in proportions you only find in meteorites, which is how we know a rock was involved.

Our old copy said the impact turned “the lush forests of Libya” into an arid wasteland. That is a lovely sentence and there is nothing behind it. The Sahara has dried and greened repeatedly on a completely different timescale, and no single airburst did that. Cut.

The genuinely amazing bit needs no embroidery. Tutankhamun was buried with a pectoral whose centrepiece scarab is carved from this same desert glass. Cabot went at it with diamond-tipped tooling to cut and polish the grip panels, and the base material is far too expensive to get wrong. The people who do that work are part stone cutter, part diamond cutter, part surgeon.

The Damascus Steel Story, Corrected

The frame is zebra-striped billet Damascus, and Damascus is genuinely beautiful and genuinely strong. Folding and forging steel onto itself drives out impurities and leaves that marbled pattern, which is why the best knife and gun makers still use it.

What our 2019 copy said was that Damascus was “the Valyrian Steel of Ancient Egypt” and that “the Pharaohs all carried swords and weapons fashioned from this super strength steel”. Cabot’s own Damascus page says the technique started in the Near East and dates back to the 1st century. The last Egyptian pharaoh died in 30 BC. The Pharaohs never carried it, and we were wrong by a comfortable few centuries in the wrong direction.

The real lineage is Near Eastern and South Asian, it is roughly two thousand years old rather than five, and it is still impressive without borrowing Tutankhamun’s name. Cabot calls itself the preeminent purveyor of Damascus steel custom 1911s and, looking at the frame, it is hard to argue.

Where the $3 Million Figure Comes From

Straight answer: from us. Cabot has never published a price for the Stellar Fusion, and our headline number is an estimate. We are labelling it as one now, because our old copy did something worse than guess.

It said the estimate was “based on the sale price of the two-gun Cabot Big Bang Pistol Set”. There is no sale price. The Big Bang set was unveiled in 2016 with a $4.5 million asking price for the pair, and the coverage from the time is careful to say those guns would be the most expensive ever “if sold”. We have found nothing since confirming a buyer. An asking price is not a sale price, and turning one into the other is how a guess gets promoted to a fact.

So: seven figures is a reasonable expectation for a one-off with a meteorite slide, a Neilson frame and a gold barrel. Three million is our number, not Cabot’s. Anyone quoting it as a confirmed price, including our own 2019 self, is quoting an estimate.

Art Meets Engineering

Why does this exist? If you have to ask, you are probably not the target market. This is the point where engineering meets art and exclusivity, and you are buying a back story of interstellar travel, ancient toolmaking and the sheer stubbornness of a machine shop that decided a meteorite was a reasonable thing to put in a CNC.

If that sounds mad, remember Swiss watches sell for millions and nobody blinks. This is the same principle pointed at a 1911. You could buy a house for the money. The people who buy Cabot guns already have several.

What You Can Actually Buy

Nobody reading this is putting a Stellar Fusion on a credit card, and no retailer we track lists a Cabot at all. If the Damascus itch is real, though, Cabot does sell guns that a human being can order.

The one to look at is the Cabot Apocalypse 2.0, which runs $8,495 and puts a genuine Damascus slide on a gun you can shoot on a Tuesday. It is a lot of money and a fraction of a percent of the Stellar Fusion. For everything else in that world, we ranked the field in the best custom 1911 pistols.

If you would rather spend sensibly and go shooting, our live gun deals page tracks what is actually discounted right now across the retailers we follow. This page used to send you to two merchant sale pages through short links whose labels no longer matched where they went, so we have taken them out. If you just want to look at the Stellar Fusion properly, Cabot’s own page for it has the good photographs.

Then go back to your $2,000 1911, which will suddenly feel unfinished and inadequate, and enjoy the fact that objects like this exist at all.

Cabot Stellar Fusion FAQ

How much does the Cabot Stellar Fusion cost?

Cabot has never published a price. Our $3 million figure is an estimate, based on the $4.5 million asking price Cabot put on its two-gun Big Bang meteorite set in 2016. Treat any specific number you see for the Stellar Fusion, including ours, as a guess.

What is the Cabot Stellar Fusion made of?

The slide is a meteoric-matrix billet from the Gibeon meteorite, the frame is zebra-striped Damascus steel forged by Master Bladesmith J. Neilson, the sights are solid Gibeon meteorite showing the Widmanstatten pattern, the grips are layered Libyan desert glass, and the barrel is plated in 24 carat gold. It is chambered in .45 ACP and it works.

Is the Stellar Fusion the most expensive gun in the world?

Not by the only measure that is settled. The most expensive firearm ever sold at auction is the Colt Single Action Army used to kill Billy the Kid, at $6,030,313 in 2021. The Stellar Fusion is a strong candidate for the most expensive new production handgun ever offered, which is a different title.

How old is the Gibeon meteorite?

About 4.5 billion years, roughly the age of the solar system. That is when it formed, not when it landed. It fell in what is now Namibia in prehistoric times, around thirty thousand years ago, at an estimated 26 metric tons, and was formally identified in 1836.

What is Libyan desert glass?

A natural yellow-green glass from the Great Sand Sea, formed roughly 30 million years ago when a meteoritic airburst melted the sand. It carries osmium and iridium in proportions found only in meteorites. Tutankhamun was buried with a pectoral whose scarab is carved from it.

Did the Pharaohs really use Damascus steel?

No, and we said they did until we checked. Cabot’s own Damascus page dates the technique to the Near East in the 1st century AD. The last Egyptian pharaoh died in 30 BC, so the timeline does not work. Damascus steel is Near Eastern and South Asian, and about two thousand years old.

Can you actually buy a Cabot 1911?

Yes, just not this one. No retailer in our pricing feed carries Cabot, so you order through Cabot or its dealer network. The Apocalypse 2.0 at $8,495 is the realistic entry point for a genuine Damascus-slide Cabot.