Lone Ranger's pistol: Where you can see it
| Cody, Wyo.
A museum in Wyoming has acquired an old pistol made famous by a masked hero of television from more than 60 years ago.
The Lone Ranger's Colt .45 is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody.
The single-action revolver belonged to actor John Hart. He portrayed the Lone Ranger in the original TV series that ran from 1952 to 1954, about a masked Texas Ranger who battled injustice in the Old West. His sidekick Tonto was one of the most well-known American Indian stereotypes of all time.
Hart used several firearms over his acting career, but this gun is special. It features ivory grips and intricate engraving.
The Powell Tribune reports the museum also has acquired autographed photos of Hart in costume and a cookbook he wrote in the 1990s.
The Tribune did not report how much the museum paid for the Long Ranger's revolver but prices for historic Western guns are high. Earlier this month in Arizona, the Colt. .45 used by Wyatt Earp in the shootout at the OK Corral sold for $225,000.
Wyatt Earp was the Pima County Deputy Sheriff, and Deputy Town Marshal in Tombstone at the time of the 1881 shootout. Earp was not injured in that gunfight.
A Chandler, Arizona man spent $150,000 on a shotgun owned by Earp, a family archive and other items.
In 2009, a Colt Single-Action Army revolver, Serial No. 1, was sold at auction for $862,500, one of the highest prices ever paid at auction for a firearm.
In 2008, an 1847 Colt Walker .44 black powder revolver sold at auction in Fairfield, Maine to an unknown bidder yesterday for $920,000.
In 2010, a .45 caliber 1907 German Lugar, one of only three made, was sold for $494,500. The same gun was purchased by Indonesian billionaire, Yani Haryanto, for $1 million in the late 1980s.
