This Spencer has exceptional wood, with great color, tight fit to the metal, and few handling marks on either the buttstock or forestock. The buttstock has crisp subinspector markings on the top of the comb near the buttplate tang and the forestock has one on the bottom near the receiver. There are no US inspection or acceptance marks or sign there ever were. The forestock has crisp edges along the barrel channel. The rifle is set up for a socket bayonet, the correct configuration for the army rifle.

The barrel shows smooth metal with lots of nice thin blue-turned-plum brown finish. The rear sight is in place, showing a thin blue with some rubbing the color on the bar. The barrel has a clear “NM” stamp on top, near the receiver, which bears the correct three-line Spencer marking: “Spencer Repeating / Rifle Co. Boston Mass. / Pat’d March 6. 1860.” The receiver, hammer, lockplate and loading assembly show smooth metal, mostly bright or muted silver in tone, with some very faint hints of case color, and scattered gray spots. The mechanics are very good and the bore is mint. All swivels, bands, springs, and the magazine tube are present.

Only some 6,000 to 8,000 New Model carbines and rifles were manufactured in 1868. They were very similar to the 1865 and 1867 series, produced in .50 caliber, and numbered sequentially from the latter, ranging from about 101,000 to about 108,000, apparently with some overlap with the M1867 at the lower end. This one is numbered 101973, falling pretty early in the production run, which was divided between carbines and rifles. Flayderman thought it included roughly 2,500 carbines and 5,000 rifles. Marcot estimates it at about 5,000 carbines and 1,000 rifles, making it much scarcer.

These New Models were the last of the Spencer military line, although the army did convert about 1,100 of the Burnside Spencers into infantry rifles in 1871. This is an excellent example of the company’s attempts to compete in the much smaller post-Civil War market for military arms as the army experimented with different arms systems. It would fit a US shoulder arms or repeating arms collection as well as one devoted specifically to Christopher Spencer and his influential repeating arms.  [sr]

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