Pinfire Cartridge Boxes for Sale from the Chris C. Curtis Collection

In 1983, the collective knowledge of pinfire firearms was greatly increased when Chris C. Curtis and Gene P. Smith wrote The Pinfire System, a new book detailing pinfire guns and ammunition from around the world.

The book featured images of guns, patents, advertising, cartridges and more. It was the first book that focused on this often neglected topic that played such an important role in the history of firearms. This book has been out of print for many years and often shows up on the collectors market for a couple hundred dollars. This book has more of a focus on the cartridges than his next book, with many pages dedicated to showing pinfire cartridges and even identifying headstamps.

Chris Curtis recently sent me the last of his pinfire cartridge box collection. Some of the boxes went to my collection and the rest are offered for sale here. I will notate the ones that appeared in his books.

The following 4 boxes appear in The Pinfire System.

Nearly 20 years later, in 2002, Chris C. Curtis published a sequel to The Pinfire System, titled, Systeme Lefaucheux: Continuing the Study of Pinfire Cartridge Arms Including Their Role in the American Civil War. This book is still in print and available from the the publisher on Amazon. It goes into much more detail on many pinfire guns and puts a lot more focus on their military usage around the world. It does not have quite as much focus on the cartridges but does have a small section about them and contains more pictures of pinfire cartridge boxes that Curtis had acquired in the 20-year span since his first book.

He again has the 7mm and 9mm UMC box shown in the earlier book as well as a 12mm pinfire box by UMC. These 3 would make an excellent set.

The image of his 7mm boxes show some of the same examples as before plus a few new ones. Including on by P. Barnier.

The following 15mm pinfire boxes come from The Chris Curtis collection. The one on the right was displayed in his book, Systeme Lefaucheux, as shown above.

The rest of boxes are not displayed in his books but are ones that he acquired in the past 20 years since he published Systeme Lefaucheux. The first two are English tins that are very hard to find.

And lastly are 3 paper wrappers for pinfire bricks. These each originally held 4 boxes of 25.

Be sure to check out the full page of pinfire cartridges for sale: