Shiloh sharps are beautifully made rifles with excellent fit and finish. Pedersoli have superb barrels with good metal work, especially on the action, and good inletting of the stocks. Stock finish is spotty and the wood on the standard models often is so-so but acceptable. Uberti sharps are made by Pedersoli. This rifle’s serial number, 54976, is listed on page 98 of 'SHARPSHOOTER' by Wiley Sword as one of 47 Sharps Model 1859 Rifles identified as having all of the characteristic Berdan Sharps features. The rifle has a blue barrel with casehardened barrel bands, forend tip, receiver, patch box and buttplate. The forend and stock are oil finished.

Pedersoli Sharps Serial Numbers 222
Pedersoli Sharps Serial Numbers Doreen
Pedersoli Sharps 1874 For Sale
Pedersoli Sharps 45 70
Pedersoli Sharps Carbine 45 70
Pedersoli Sharps Rifles For Sale
Pedersoli Sharps Rifle Review

Hello guys and gals,
I have a rifle which I have had for a while and I would like to know more about it. I will try to be as detailed as possible.
On reciever:
Shiloh Rifle Mfg
Big Timber Montana
Barrel:
30' Octagon - blade front sight.
Approx 1.15 full length Exc at reciever - flared to match reciever.
On top of barrel, it says OLD RELIABLE in a box and C. Sharps Arms, Inc.
On bottom of barrel under forearm, it says SHILOH RIFLE MFG. w/serial number, which matches reciever.
The wood is definately better than standard and has a plastic plate with SHARPS - OLD RELIABLE on it. (shotgun style?) Has a cheek rest on it.
It has double set trigger setup.
Serial # 70**.

Pedersoli Sharps Serial Numbers 222

Shiloh thinks it may have been made about 1985, but there was no owner card sent back in, on that particular rifle.
I suspect that it was never shot before I got it. It came from an estate.
It has had the rear sight removed, or at least it appears so. There is a tang sight on reciever. It is different than what I am seeing on my other rifles, as it has no micro adjustment, for fine movement. The eye cup just loosens and you raise or lower it.
Groups are good, but I will be putting a globe sight on the front ASAP.
Just looking for more info and if possible an educated guess on value.

Pedersoli Sharps Serial Numbers Doreen

Thanks
Bestboss

Legend has it no two were ever manufactured exactly alike.

Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson and Remington are the “Big Four” iconic gun makers of the Wild West, but Sharps isn’t far behind. Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American Firearms and Their Values expertly summarizes this fifth giant:

Among the illustrious names in American firearms history is that of Christian Sharps, originator of a line of extremely practical, sturdy, long-lived and often quite handsome military and sporting rifles and handguns. Sharps arms are associated with several major historical events which shaped American destiny in the 19th century. The substantial quantities in which many of his models were made is testimony to their widespread popularity with both the military and the public during their period of manufacture and use. Undoubtedly the most widely used and popular cavalry weapon of the Civil War was the Sharps carbine. Certainly, one of the guns that most quickly comes to mind in considering the opening and expansion of the West following the Civil War is the Sharps “Buffalo” rifle. The gun was so closely associated with Western lore (and especially that concerning the meat hunters of the Old West) that its name was often used synonymously by writers of the period to indicate any big game rifle. Although no such terminology was ever applied by the Sharps company, in actuality a great many models of Sharps are called by present-day collectors and authors “Buffalo Rifles.”

Actually, two years after Christian Sharps’ death in 1874 one Sharps rifle trademark did become a legend of the Old West— the single-shot Model 1874 “Old Reliable.”

Born in Washington, N.J., in 1810, Christian Sharps apprenticed at the U.S. armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry in what was then Virginia and never left the firearms business. His original design for a breech-loading, single-shot percussion rifle and carbine became one of the best weapons of the Civil War. And when the self-contained metallic cartridge evolved in the 1860s and 1870s, Sharps was one of the first innovators to make single-shot cartridge rifles and carbines. The vertically sliding breechblock of his cartridge rifles was so powerful and dependable that, as the legend goes, many veterans of the frontier praised their various Sharps rifles as being their “old reliable” guns.

The Model 1874 had actually been in production since 1871, but it was in 1874 that the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Co. was reorganized as the Sharps Rifle Co. Two years later the new company moved its Hartford, Conn., factory to Bridgeport, Conn., and in April 1876 decided to stamp all future production of the Model 1874 Sharps with an Old Reliable trademark.

One legend about the Old Reliable Model 1874 Sharps that is partially true is that no two of them were ever manufactured exactly alike. That legend evolved mostly because the gun’s action was so strong that it could be ordered in just about any size of powerful cartridge a shooter might want. The basic Sharps cartridges comprised three parts— the powder , the bullet and the cartridge case that the powder and bullet went into—but unlike a standard Colt or Winchester cartridge, all three of those components for a Sharps cartridge could be varied in size and combined to create a unique caliber cartridge.

As Louis A. Garavaglia and Charles G. Worman explain it in Firearms of the American West, 1866–1894, “What really enhanced the Sharps’ popularity among professional buffalo hunters and other frontiersmen was the line of cartridges designed for it, cartridges so ideally suited for the plains that other single-shot manufacturers either copied them directly or devised cartridges which clearly reflected the Sharps influence.”

One particular caliber was so popular with buffalo hunters that it became known as the “Poison Slinger” or “Big Fifty.” And to this day there is controversy about exactly what caliber the Big Fifty was, even though in his bible on the Sharps, Sharps Firearms, author Frank M. Sellers wrote, “The ‘Big Fifty’ Sharps cartridge was the .50 2½ inch, NOT the .50 3¼ inch. No Model 1874 rifle was chambered for a 3¼ inch cartridge of any calibre [sic] at the factory.”

Garavaglia and Worman add: “Because a hide hunter might fire more than a hundred shots per day, he could seldom justify the expense of factory-loaded ammunition: and on the buffalo range during the early 1870s the reloading of cartridge cases by individual shooters really came into its own. In the process a goodly number of hunters devised loads they preferred to the factory standard.”

Pedersoli Sharps 1874 For Sale

Besides coming in many calibers, the Old Reliable had barrels that could be ordered in any length or weight, in round or octagon shape, or half-round and half-octagon. Double-set triggers were optional, the type of sights varied, and even the butt-plates came in optional shapes.

Pedersoli Sharps 45 70

The major variations were named “Sporting Rifle,” “Military Rifle,” “Hunter’s Rifle,” “Creedmoor Rifle,” “Mid-Range Rifle,” “Long-Range Rifle” and “Business Rifle.” Standard finish was blue with a casehardened frame, and many were deluxe engraved. The company produced about 12,445 rifles before manufacturing of the Model 1874 Sharps Old Reliable and all other models stopped in October 1880.

Frontiersman James Henry Cook, author of the 1923 memoir Fifty Years on the Old Frontier, favored a .40-90 Old Reliable with a 34-inch octagonal barrel, which cost $125. And , even though the Model 1874 was not yet marked Old Reliable, Billy Dixon used a .50- caliber one to make his now-legendary “mile-long” shot that wounded an Indian leader during the June 29, 1874, Second Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle. As gun historian Jim Earle wrote in America: The Men And Their Guns That Made Her Great, “History