The 10 Most Expensive Guns Ever Sold at Auction

A gun is a tool. Most of the ones we review here cost a few hundred dollars and are meant to be used. But strip away the function and add a century of history, a famous owner, and a story nobody can repeat, and a firearm stops being a tool and becomes a relic. That’s when the prices stop making sense.

The guns below have sold at public auction for more than most houses cost. Some belonged to presidents and emperors. One killed the most famous outlaw in American history. Here are the ten most expensive guns ever to cross an auction block, counting up to the all-time record.

The 10 most expensive guns ever sold, at a glance

Rank	Gun	Price	Year	Auction house
1	Pat Garrett’s Colt (killed Billy the Kid)	$6,030,313	2021	Bonhams
2	Ulysses S. Grant’s Remington pair	$5,170,000	2022	Rock Island
3	George Washington’s saddle pistols	$1,986,000	2002	Christie’s
4	Colt Walker revolver (No. 1022)	$1,840,000	2018	Rock Island
5	Napoleon Bonaparte’s pistols	~$1,830,000	2024	Osenat & Rossini
6	Lafayette’s pistols, given to Simón Bolívar	$1,805,000	2016	Christie’s
7	Tipu Sultan’s flintlock pistols	~$1,450,000	2025	Sotheby’s
8	Geronimo-capture Winchester (serial No. 1)	$1,265,000	2016	Rock Island
9	Al Capone’s Colt 1911 (“Sweetheart”)	$1,040,600	2021	Witherell’s
10	Theodore Roosevelt’s Smith & Wesson	$910,625	2022	Rock Island

10. Theodore Roosevelt’s Smith & Wesson revolver: $910,625

The day Theodore Roosevelt left to form the Rough Riders in 1898, a Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 was shipped to him. He kept it at his bedside, reportedly even during his White House years. It sold at Rock Island Auction Company in December 2022 for $910,625, having come down through the descendants of TR’s bodyguard and valet, James E. Amos. For a man who hunted on multiple continents and survived an assassin’s bullet mid-speech, a bedside revolver feels about right.

9. Al Capone’s Colt 1911, the “Sweetheart”: $1,040,600

Chicago’s most notorious gangster owned this Colt 1911, and his family nicknamed it the “Sweetheart.” It sold at Witherell’s in California in October 2021 for just over one million dollars. Here’s the fun part: Guinness World Records still lists this pistol as the most expensive gun ever sold at auction. That’s no longer true. Two months earlier, the gun at number one on this list had already smashed Capone’s price by roughly six times. The record books just have not caught up.

8. The Geronimo-capture Winchester, serial No. 1: $1,265,000

This isn’t just a famous rifle. It’s the rifle: the very first Winchester Model 1886 ever made, serial number 1. It was presented to Captain Henry Ware Lawton, the officer who ran down and captured Apache leader Geronimo in 1886. It sold at Rock Island in May 2016 for $1,265,000, and for two years it held the title of most expensive single firearm ever auctioned, until a Colt revolver knocked it off in 2018. We will get to that one.

7. Tipu Sultan’s flintlock pistols: about $1.45 million

The “Tiger of Mysore,” Tipu Sultan ruled the South Indian kingdom of Mysore and died fighting the British at the siege of Seringapatam in 1799. His pair of silver-mounted flintlock pistols sold at Sotheby’s London in October 2025 for about 1.1 million pounds, roughly $1.45 million. The wild detail: that final price was nearly fourteen times the pre-sale estimate. When a name carries enough history, the estimate is just a starting suggestion.

6. Lafayette’s pistols, given to Simón Bolívar: $1,805,000

In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette sent a cased pair of gold-and-silver-mounted flintlock pistols to Simón Bolívar, the liberator of much of South America, calling him “the George Washington of South America.” Made by Nicolas-Noël Boutet of Versailles, the finest gunmaker of his era, they sold at Christie’s in New York in April 2016 for $1,805,000. Bolívar’s effusive thank-you letter still survives. Two revolutions, two continents, one pair of pistols.

5. Napoleon Bonaparte’s pistols: about $1.83 million

These gold-and-silver-inlaid flintlocks by Paris gunsmith Louis-Marin Gosset carry a dark story. After his forced abdication in 1814, Napoleon reportedly intended to use them to take his own life. His squire, Caulaincourt, quietly emptied the powder to thwart him. The pistols sold near Paris in July 2024 for 1.69 million euros, about $1.83 million. Days before the sale, the French government declared them national treasures and banned their export from the country.

4. The Colt Walker revolver, No. 1022: $1,840,000

The Colt Walker of 1847 was the most powerful handgun in the world for decades, a massive cap-and-ball revolver designed with input from Texas Ranger Samuel Walker. This particular example, serial 1022, is the only one known to survive in its original case, and it came with a provenance card handwritten by Samuel Colt himself. A Danish sea captain bought it new in New York around 1847, and it stayed in his family in Denmark for a century. They reportedly buried it to hide it from the Nazis during World War II. It sold at Rock Island in April 2018 for $1,840,000, the single-firearm world record at the time.

3. George Washington’s saddle pistols: $1,986,000

This pair of saddle pistols was a gift to George Washington from Lafayette around 1778, and Washington is documented carrying them at Valley Forge, the Battle of Monmouth, Yorktown, and during the Whiskey Rebellion. They later passed to Andrew Jackson. In other words, two American presidents carried the same guns. They sold at Christie’s in January 2002 for $1,986,000, and were eventually donated to the Fort Ligonier museum in Pennsylvania, where the public can still see them.

2. Ulysses S. Grant’s Remington revolvers: $5,170,000

After the capture of Vicksburg in 1863, Major General Ulysses S. Grant was presented with a cased pair of Remington New Model Army revolvers, serial numbers 1 and 2, the very first of their kind. They were engraved by the legendary L.D. Nimschke with ivory grips carved with Grant’s own portrait. Unknown to the public until 2018, they sold at Rock Island in May 2022 for a staggering $5,170,000. Because it’s a matched pair rather than a single gun, it sits just behind the overall record, which brings us to number one.

1. Pat Garrett’s Colt, the gun that killed Billy the Kid: $6,030,313

On the night of July 14, 1881, Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid at Pete Maxwell’s ranch in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The gun he used was a Colt Single Action Army, serial 55093, in .44-40 with a 7.5-inch barrel. In August 2021, it sold at Bonhams in Los Angeles for $6,030,313, roughly triple its estimate, and it remains the most expensive firearm ever sold at auction by a wide margin.

What makes it remarkable is that nobody disputes the story. The same Bonhams sale also moved Billy the Kid’s own escape shotgun for $978,313 and his Winchester for $375,312, but it was the gun that ended him, not the guns he carried, that broke every record in the books.

A few of the most expensive guns that did not make the cut

• Theodore Roosevelt’s Fox shotgun sold for $862,500 in 2010. It holds the record for the most expensive shotgun ever auctioned, just missing our top ten.
• The only authenticated photo of Billy the Kid, a tintype from around 1880, sold for $2.3 million in 2011. We left it off because it’s a photograph, not a firearm, but the number is too good not to mention.
• The “Wyatt Earp Buntline Special” is a myth. We tell the full story in Wild West Outlaw Guns. The legend of a long-barreled Colt made for Earp first appeared in a 1931 biography, decades after the fact, and no Colt records support it. The Earp Colt that did sell, for $225,000 in 2014, has hotly disputed provenance.

Why these prices happen

Notice what these most expensive guns have in common. It’s almost never about the firearm itself. A Colt Single Action Army in good condition might bring a few thousand dollars. Attach it to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, prove the connection beyond doubt, and you add six million. The value lives in the story, and the story has to be airtight. Houses like Bonhams, Rock Island, Christie’s and Heritage Auctions all see the same pattern. That’s why provenance, the documented chain of ownership, matters more than caliber, condition, or craftsmanship at this level.

It’s a useful reminder that a gun is only ever worth what someone will pay, and that what they’re really buying is a piece of history they can hold in their hands.

Want more? See the 14 guns that changed the world and the most powerful rifles ever built.

Keep exploring Cool Guns

• The 7 Rarest Production Guns in the World
• The 10 Most Famous Guns in History
• The Biggest Guns Ever Built
• The Oldest Gun Still Being Made Today