Uncommon vintage pistols. Civil Struggle carbines. Cased pairs of pre-war Colts. Previous West revolvers and lever-action rifles. Sharps buffalo weapons with the type of provenance trails that take a lifetime to construct. Lugers, Mausers, M1 Garands, and pre-war Springfields that price as a lot as a used truck. All of it on show. A lot of it accessible on the market. And standing behind each desk is among the most enthusiastic, educated antique-arms collectors you’ll ever meet in a single room.
That’s the Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation present. Its 2026 Spring Present lands in Denton on April 24, 25, and 26, and the centerpiece this yr is a members’ Parade of Sharps Firearms.
Should you accumulate something from the cowboy period, the Civil Struggle, the Indian Wars, the Nice Struggle, or the Second World Struggle — or if you happen to merely wish to stand in a room with women and men who’ve spent forty, fifty, sixty years chasing the items you’ve gotten solely examine — clear the weekend.
The Fundamentals
Dates: April 24–26, 2026Venue: Embassy Suites Resort & Conference Heart, 3100 City Heart Path, Denton, TX 76201Host lodge price: $165/night time by the Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation room block. Name 940-243-3799, Possibility 5, and reference “TX Gun Collectors 2026.” Weekend rooms promote out. Ebook early.Non-member present flooring entry: Contact TGCA for pricing.
Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation members, their quick household, and legislation enforcement, navy, and first responders enter free. Present admission particulars are on the TGCA Spring Present web page.
Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation: Seventy-Six Years On
The Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation was based on February 27, 1950, on the Roosevelt Resort in Waco, by a gaggle of working collectors led by J.W. Bates of Wortham. Seventy-six years later, the membership continues to be assembly on its unique schedule — fourth weekend in April, third weekend in October — and nonetheless working on its founding premise: a collectors’ fellowship constructed round vintage, basic, and Curio & Relic arms. Not fashionable. Not industrial. Membership reaches throughout 46 states and into collectors in Australia, Canada, England, Japan, and Switzerland.
A Present In contrast to Most Others
The TGCA present flooring is the type of place that ruins industrial gun reveals for you ceaselessly. The tables are loaded with uncommon and traditionally vital items — vintage American martial arms, frontier Colts and Smith & Wessons, Sharps and Winchester lengthy weapons, World Struggle I and World Struggle II martial collectibles in collector grade, accoutrements, holsters, edged weapons, and the type of documented historic artifacts that merely don’t flip up on the civic heart subsequent to the AR-15 components and beef jerky.
Simply as useful because the iron on the tables is the information within the room. The women and men behind these tables have been accumulating for many years — lots of them for the reason that Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. They will inform an actual Walker Colt from a second-generation replica at six paces. They know which Patersons are proper and that are flawed, which Sharps carbines noticed service and which have been arsenal returns, which Lugers are real 1902 Carbines and that are fakes.
The provenance trails they carry of their heads run deeper than something you will discover anyplace else within the nation. The information within the room is definitely worth the journey by itself. Carry questions. Carry a pocket book. Carry your pockets — a lot of what’s on the desk is on the market.
A non-competitive show at a Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation present will not be a museum exhibit. Museum displays sit behind glass, curated by strangers. A TGCA show is one collector standing subsequent to their very own piece, prepared to speak about it for so long as anybody is prepared to hear. Rule 9 of the present guidelines retains the ground pure: no modern weapons, no exceptions.
This Present Highlights: Sharps!
The centerpiece of the 2026 Spring Present is a members’ Parade of Sharps Firearms — a non-competitive show drawn from the rifle lineage that runs from the New Mannequin 1859 carbines carried by Berdan’s Sharpshooters by the Mannequin 1874 buffalo weapons of the Texas plains and the Creedmoor goal rifles that outlined American long-range capturing within the 1870s.
Christian Sharps acquired U.S. Patent No. 5,763 for his falling-block breech-loading motion on September 12, 1848. The rifles constructed round that motion went on to arm the first and 2nd United States Sharpshooters within the Civil Struggle, kill the buffalo on the southern plains within the 1870s, and personal the long-range goal traces at Creedmoor. For background on the rifle household, see P&L’s full historical past of Sharps rifles and the account of Berdan’s Sharpshooters within the Civil Struggle.
The women and men bringing them to Denton are those who personal them. That’s the complete level.
Civil Struggle: At all times Sturdy at TGCA
Civil Struggle materials is a foundational class at each Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation present, and the 2026 Spring Present shall be no exception. Search for Springfield rifle-muskets in unique configuration, Sharps carbines with documented Union service, Spencer repeating rifles and carbines, Burnside and Joslyn carbines, Colt and Remington percussion revolvers, edged weapons, holsters, cartridge bins, belt plates, and the interval images and ephemera that spherical out a severe Civil Struggle assortment. The Civil Struggle tables are the place many TGCA members constructed their first collections forty and fifty years in the past — and so they preserve bringing the iron again yr after yr. For background on the Union-side arsenal, see P&L’s Union Military arsenal: firearms of the North.
Saturday: The Public sale and the Banquet
The Saturday public sale has been the anchor of TGCA reveals for many years. Consignments come from members’ personal collections, which suggests heaps have a tendency to come back from severe cabinets relatively than clearing-house stock. Previous gross sales have moved Colts, Winchesters, Sharps, and Civil Struggle martial arms at costs that typically shock even the individuals within the room. Should you accumulate, this can be a room the place you should buy.
Saturday night time is the banquet — the room the place the annual assembly occurs, the fellowship aspect of TGCA occurs, and the place many of the offers that didn’t get carried out on the ground get sketched out over dinner.
Trying Forward
The 2026 Fall Present is already on the calendar — October 16–18, 2026, on the identical venue. The TGCA ahead schedule on tgca.org runs by 2032. This can be a membership that is aware of what it’s doing.
One final thing. In case you are a severe collector of vintage American arms and you haven’t joined the Texas Gun Collectors Affiliation, it is best to. The membership pays for itself the primary time you stroll a TGCA present flooring.
If you already know of any boards or websites that needs to be referenced on this itemizing, please tell us right here.
