Page 7 - Auction84-Book1

Ladies and Gentlemen,
brings our total auction sales to date over one billion dollars. A large number of you have been with us for many years. You ride for the brand every day. We love you. You are family.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for your support. It is a hell
of an auction, and we hope you enjoy it. If you have never attended one of our auctions or if it has been a few years, I cannot encourage you enough to come in person! Moreover, if you think our catalogs are good, wait until you see the preview hall!
We are looking forward to seeing everyone in December. From our family to yours, we wish you a safe and memorable holiday season. Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!
Kevin Hogan, President
Rock Island Auction Company
Featuring the Collections of:
It is with great pleasure and excitement we present to you our final Premier Auction of 2021 in the form of these three spectacular catalog volumes. 2021 has been a banner year for fine and historic firearms
as well as Rock Island Auction. It marks our 19th year as the world’s number one auction house in our field. Yet we say repeatedly and
Milan J. Turk Dr. Robert Azar Gus Cargile Malcolm King Dr. Gerald Klaz Robert M. Lee Tom Lewis George Moller Doug Ellison
with conviction of our market, our hobby, and our passion: fine and historic arms are significantly undervalued and underrated as an entire collecting genre and alternative hard asset investment. The history and art that so many of these objects possess is unrivaled anywhere else in the decorative arts field.
However, this year has been special for our firm and the fine & historic firearms market. The world record which RIAC set in 2018 for a single American firearm at auction, $1,840,000 for the Danish Sea Captain Colt Walker was shattered in August by the sale of Pat Garrett’s
Single Action used to kill William Bonney (a.k.a. Billy the Kid) for a staggering sum of $6,000,000. I have long subscribed to the idiom, “a rising tide floats all boats.” What a banner sale for our field! I believe that antique and collectable firearms are beginning to get the recognition that they deserve on the world stage and nowhere is that more true than at Rock Island Auction Company.
New collectors and investment buyers are tuning into this fascinating and underrated/undervalued market every day! In May, we hosted the largest grossing firearms auction in history posting over $30,000,000
in three days, only to follow that up with the second highest grossing firearms auction held with September posting over $24,000,000 in sales. The two largest grossing firearms auction ever held went back to back, less than five months apart, here at Rock Island Auction Company. That success is not luck. It comes down to a few basics, and at the core, it is simply people.
YOU our clients are head and shoulders the best in the world. Thank you for your support, attention and interest. YOU, our consignors, are head and shoulders the best in the world. We cannot thank you enough for the opportunity you have bestowed upon us to market and sell the objects and collections that have, in many ways, defined your lives or at least played a significant part in them. As I say every time, it is a massive responsibility we have to you, your family, your friends, and your loved ones. We do not take that responsibility lightly; it is with us every day and night but we embrace it and we do so proudly. When you sell with RIAC, you put the best team in the business to work directly for you.
Lastly to our team, thank you. It is an honor to work with you each and every day. Every catalog is a labor of love. December is always particularly challenging with only a three month turn between sales. Thank you for your incredible effort! We did the impossible this year. 2021 has been our largest year to date in number of guns sold, number of auctions held and annual sales. The little auction company on the banks of the Mississippi River that started in a garage will join the century club in 2021, with $100,000,000 in annual sales. This also
5