Oakley memorabilia brings heirs $520,000

McALLEN, Texas – A shotgun that once belonged to Western sharpshooter and entertainer Annie Oakley sold for more than $143,000 at an auction in Dallas on Sunday.

The trove of about 100 of the icon’s items headlining Heritage Auctions’ “Legends of the Wild West” event brought in nearly $520,000, according to the auction house.

The items included several guns, her Stetson hat, photographs and letters. Oakley’s great-grandnieces, who put up the items, had inherited them from their mother, who died in 2009.

One of those descendants, Terrye Holcomb, remembers shooting the guns for target practice on Sunday mornings in California’s Santa Monica Mountains and wearing Oakley’s Stetson hat – which sold for $17,925 – for Halloween.

One man who flew in from Odessa to bid on one of two Marlin .22-caliber rifles – one sold for $71,700, the other for $83,650 – asked Holcomb and her sister, Tommye Tait, to sign his catalog after buying one of the rifles.

Oakley’s Parker Brothers 12-gauge shotgun garnered the highest price, $143,400. Tom Slater, Director of Historical Auctions for Heritage, would not identify the gun’s buyer, but said he was a private collector of Oakley and Buffalo Bill items and had purchased a number of Sunday’s auction pieces.