Fudd Friday: Escape From SHOT - Las Vegas Antique Arms Show 2026

I love attending SHOT Show, but it’s all new, flashy stuff. Some classic milsurp guns do show up (like what we see at Navy Arms or Zastava booths), and there are definitely hot new hunting rifles and shotguns (see last week’s Fudd Friday piece here). But for someone like myself, who’s used to shopping off the used gun rack at their local dealer, well, there’s not a whole lot. So that’s why, on the final day of SHOT Show 2026, I grabbed an Uber with some colleagues and headed across town to the Las Vegas Antique Arms Show. I am very glad I made the trip.

Classic Fudd firearms @ TFB:

• Fudd Friday: Parker Hale Classic Hunting Rifles
• 1911 Manufacturers: The Complete Guide to Common 1911 Models
• TFB Armorer's Bench: Diagnosing and Assessing a Colt 1877 Lightning
• Wheelgun Wednesday: A Classic Smith & Wesson With A Grim History

Around For The Long Haul

The Las Vegas Antique Arms Show is an “antique show” in more ways than one. Yes, it does show plenty of vintage firearms and other old gear (more on that in a minute). But the show has been around long enough to qualify as an antique itself, if that was a thing. It’s more than 60 years old.

The show was founded in 1962 by Harry Mann, a local gun collector and dealer; the first show was held at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. It has run every year since, except for COVID-19 interruptions. Some people claim it is the oldest continuously running specialty event in Las Vegas. At a bare minimum, it is the oldest continuously running gun show, and after Harry Mann died, Wally Beinfeld took over as producer until 2013. Then Paul and Karen Balfour took charge, and after a couple of moves over the years, it is now based in the Westgate Resort & Casino, and managed by Morphy Auctions who assumed control in 2020.

Now, the show says more than 600 exhibitors attend, looking to sell or just display firearms and other related merchandise. There are also custom knife-makers, collector organizations and historical societies with displays, and many of the big names in the world of American antique firearms collecting attend.

Fudd Paradise

This year’s show displays were spread over three rooms, with the first room being the second-largest. The focus here was on finer things: antique engraved firearms, books on how to do your own engraving, and so on. I will say that there was some very nice stuff on display here, and the books on learning engraving were particularly interesting to me. If only I wasn’t handling the effective workload of two full-time jobs, think of how much time I’d have to learn new skills…

There were still many non-firearms items on display (books, especially), but this bric-a-brac was definitely of interest to collectors or lovers of wood-and-steel guns, especially finer hunting firearms or military surplus. But the majority of this room was taken up with firearms that represented the heyday of American gunmaking, the last 25 years of the 19th century and the first 75 years of the 20th century, with a heavy emphasis on the first half of that time period. Want a nice Winchester lever gun? Whether it was a Model 1873, Model 1892, Model 1894, Model 1886 or Model 1895, you could find whatever you wanted in whatever condition you wanted. Even the nicer stuff from after World War I was there; I didn’t see a Model 71, but I’m sure they had a few of them, and I did see some beautiful Model 64s, which did nothing to lessen my interest in acquiring such.

There were many other manufacturers to check out, but in smaller quantities and varying degrees of interest. Marlin lever guns seemed quite rare, but someone had a rack of Marlin Model 60s for sale; once America’s best-selling .22LR semi, this has practically been forgotten now. Some Savage Model 99s (or Model 1899s, same difference) were scattered around the room, and plenty of shotguns from both the big names and smaller names in that scene.

One of the most interesting things I saw was a rack of Bullard lever-actions (click here to see why I’m in love with the Bullard—I consider it one of the finest sporting rifles ever made in the U.S.).

But almost every table had a treasure on it, something odd. Obscure mil-surp revolvers from European pre-World War 1 arsenals, like a German Reichsrevolver or a Russian Nagant, or Swedish Husqvarna six-shooter. Old American concealed carry semi-auto pistols, like a Savage 1907 or Colt 1908, and lots of hideaway revolvers from the decades before that—sawhandle Remingtons in .32 rimfire, or Smith & Wesson 1 ½ tip-up revolvers in the same cartridge, or Marlin No.32 Standards. And of course, plenty of full-sized percussion and cartridge revolvers from the Wild West era, with old Merwin & Hulberts alongside crusty Colts and Smith & Wessons. There were newer, 20th-century Smith & Wessons and Colts, too, and tables that were literally stacked with Walther P38s or Luger P-08s.