As a part of my quarantine reading, I am reading James Gillett's Texas Rangers memoirs, Six Years with the Texas Rangers, written in the 1920s. Of course he was writing mainly from memory, so some of his details may be off, but I'm finding it to be very believable and well written.
In writing about the year 1875, Gillett records that he and some other Rangers purchased new Winchester 1873s. He wrote:
As soon as we were located in the new camp, Privates Nevill, Bell and Seiker obtained permission from Captain Roberts to visit Austin to buy a case of ten Winchesters. Up to this time the company was armed with .50 caliber Sharps carbines. These guns would heat easily and thus were very inaccurate shooters. The state furnished this weapon to its rangers at a cost of $17.50, and at that time furnished no other class of gun. The new center-fire 1873-model Winchester had just appeared on the market and sold at $50 for the rifle and $40 for the carbine. A ranger who wanted a Winchester had to pay for it out of his own pocket and supply his own ammunition as well, for the state furnished cartridges only for the Sharps gun. However, ten men in Company D, myself included, were willing to pay the price to have a superior arm. I got carbine number 13401, and for the next six years of my ranger career I never used any other weapon. I have killed almost every kind of game that is found in Texas, from the biggest old bull buffalo to a fox squirrel with this little .44 Winchester. Today I still preserve it as a prized memento of the past.
I found this paragraph to be very intriguing. I haven't done any research, but I wonder where that carbine is now. Perhaps someone here knows. Is it in a museum somewhere? If I had tons of extra money, I'd send off for the factory letter--I think that would be interesting (I wonder how many times that gun has been lettered).
Also, I used an inflation estimator app to find the following. The $17.50 charged for the Sharps carbines would be worth $410.64 in 2020. The $50 for an 1873 rifle would be $1173.25 and the $40 for a carbine would be $938.60. If Gillett's memory for prices is correct, those Winchesters were not inexpensive.
Anyway, I thought that this was interesting and thought that it might be of interest to others.
CC Griff