POTD: French Bayle 1879 Wallet Pistol – An Ideal Conceal?
Sam.S 11.22.21
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! This Photo of the Day comes courtesy of a French gunmaker by the name of Charles Bayle. Charles Bayle was the inventor of this squeeze-style pistol otherwise known as the 1879 Wallet Pistol. This makes me think of those modern-day Ideal Conceal cellphone style handguns and I think it is so cool that someone all the way back in the late 1800s thought to make a “wallet pistol” let alone any equivalent.
“It has six superposed chambers that rotate to the left for emptying and reloading. It has a double action only trigger and a firing pin for each chamber that are fixed to a rotating rod. A pull of the trigger fires one round. When the trigger is pulled again the next chamber is fired. The ejector rod is absent. Some have reported there to be less than ten of these pistols in American collections making it one of, if not the most, rare of the palm squeezer and wallet pistols from the late 19th century.”
Lot 130: Unique French Bayle 1879 Wallet-Style Palm Pistol. (n.d.). Rock Island Auction Company. photograph. Retrieved November 19, 2021, from https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/62/130/unique-french-bayle-1879-walletstyle-palm-pistol.
