Forgotten Weapons’ Ian McCollum, partnering with James D. Julia auctions, has gotten the chance to take a look a very rare and historically significant piece: A Winchester 1894 takedown rifle made in 1907… With a registered Maxim silencer:

As Ian points out in the video, registered Maxim silencers are extremely rare, as owners at the time were generally unwilling to register inexpensive silencers. Further, surviving unregistered Maxim silencers cannot be retroactively registered, and must be destroyed.

A very, very rare beast: Registered Maxim silencer. Image source: jamesdjulia.com.

Today, the $200 tax stamp is a nuisance, but back in 1934 it was a de-facto ban on suppressors. Maxim’s model generally cost about $7-$10 when it was new (roughly half the cost of a rifle, at the time), or the equivalent of about $120 today. In 1934, the $200 tax stamp was worth the equivalent of $3500 in 2014* money. It’s no wonder that for so many years, silencers were dead and gone in America; but regulations haven’t really aged as intended and silencers again are relatively common.

As with all auction videos, this rifle and its silencer are up for auction at James D. Julia’s website.

*CPI’s inflation calculator only goes up to the year 2014