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Ruby Pistol · Volume 8

Owning One: the Market and the Law

What Ruby-types sell for, why none is an antique, why every original is a curio or relic twice over, the import rule for C&R handguns, the automatic variants, and the Michigan position

Figure 1 — An Alkartasuna Ruby-type, left side, sold by Legacy Collectibles in 2025 as a Second World War American bring-back, with holster and capture document. Its listing records about 93 per cent original…
Figure 1 — An Alkartasuna Ruby-type, left side, sold by Legacy Collectibles in 2025 as a Second World War American bring-back, with holster and capture document. Its listing records about 93 per cent original finish and a bulged barrel. Alkartasuna is the one Ruby maker named on ATF's curio-or-relic list. Photograph: Legacy Collectibles, item 36083, used with credit.

This volume sets out the federal and Michigan texts and applies them to Ruby-types. The application is this dive’s reading. The Borchardt C-93 dive’s Vol 8 quotes the federal antique and curio definitions and the Michigan pistol statutes in full; they are summarised, not repeated, here.

8.2 The market in one paragraph

Ruby-types are among the cheapest military pistols of their age on the American market. They were made in vast numbers, they carry a poor reputation, and most survivors are anonymous “Spanish .32s”. What lifts a price is a documented story (a bring-back with capture papers), French service marks in good condition, a scarce maker, or a Gabilondo pistol marked RUBY. Realised prices at Rock Island Auction are login-walled and were not read; the figures below are dealers’ and auction estimates.

8.3 Prices on record

All in US dollars, as published.

Table 1 — Prices on record

SourceItemPriceStatus
Legacy Collectibles, item 36083 (photographed April 2025)Alkartasuna Ruby-type, WWI, ~93% finish, bulged barrel; with holster and a WWII capture document750sold
Collectors Firearms, Houston, PR56239 (undated)Arizmendi, Zulaica “Cebra” under a Beistegui legend; AZ code on frame and magazine; stars; “superb” bore and finish550”previously sold”
Rock Island Auction, sale 2062, lot 221Ruby-type with capture papers, patch and hang tagestimate 300–500realised price behind login
Rock Island Auction, sale 1025, lot 411three Ruby-types: an Astra Model 1916 Victoria, a “The Victory” 1914 model, a Victoria Arms .380estimate 950–1,500 for the threerealised price behind login
Rock Island Auction, sale 1025, lot 2843five Ruby-style pistols including a Gabilondo y Urresti Ruby and a Francisco Arizmendiestimate 1,000–1,500 for the fiverealised price behind login
Rock Island Auction, sale 5021, lot 1012Gabilondo y Urresti Ruby, “very good”, GU coded (Vol 1)no estimate shownrealised price behind login

Sources: the listings cited.123456 The record is thin, mostly undated and partly multi-gun. The sale dates of the Rock Island lots are not shown on the lot pages read. A buyer should treat the table as a floor and ceiling of a few hundred dollars to the high hundreds for ordinary pistols, not as a price guide.

8.4 What drives the price

From what the listings choose to describe:

  • Story. Both of the higher-priced pistols in the table are sold on their papers: the Legacy pistol with a capture document, the Rock Island lot 221 with capture papers and a hang tag.13 A Ruby-type that came home from the Second World War is worth more than its condition alone.
  • French service marks. Collectors Firearms describes the code, the matching magazine, the stars and the French-marked safety as the selling points of its Cebra.2
  • Maker. Rock Island catalogues the Gabilondo pistols by name and the rest as “Spanish” or “Ruby type”.65 A pistol marked GABILONDOS Y URRESTI and RUBY is the one with the name.
  • Condition and safety. A bulged barrel did not stop a sale, but it makes a pistol a display piece (Vol 6).1

8.5 Federal law: not an antique

A Ruby-type made from 1914 onward is not an antique under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(16), whose first limb requires manufacture “in or before 1898”.7 It is a firearm, and every ordinary federal rule on handgun transfer applies.

8.6 Federal law: a curio or relic, twice over

Every original Ruby-type qualifies as a curio or relic, and many qualify on two grounds.

  1. By age. 27 CFR 478.11 makes curios or relics of “Firearms which were manufactured at least 50 years prior to the current date, but not including replicas thereof”.8 A pistol of 1914 to the 1930s qualifies with decades to spare.
  2. By listing. ATF’s Curios or Relics List (January 1972 to April 2025) includes, in Section II:9
    • “Alkartasuna, semiautomatic pistol, cal. .32.”, the one Ruby maker named.
    • “All properly marked and identified semiautomatic pistols and revolvers used by, or mfd. for, any military organization prior to 1946.” A Ruby-type with French, Finnish or other military markings (codes, stars, property marks) is within it.

Curio or relic status lets a holder of a federal collector’s licence (a Type 03 licence) acquire the pistol across state lines; it does not remove it from the Gun Control Act. The Borchardt dive’s Vol 8 sets out what the status does and does not do.

8.7 Import

Importing a handgun is governed by 18 U.S.C. § 925. Subsection (e) directs ATF to authorise a licensed importer to bring in “All handguns, listed as curios or relics … provided that such handguns are generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes”.10 So a Ruby-type’s C&R status does not by itself admit it; the sporting-purposes condition also applies to a handgun. How ATF applies that condition to a small .32 blowback was not established for this dive. A buyer abroad (for instance from the Finnish 1965–1986 sales, Vol 3) should leave importation to a licensed importer.

8.8 The automatic Ruby-types

Some Ruby-type pistols were made to fire automatically; a reader of Forgotten Weapons mentions “extended magazines and full auto mode”, and the Ruby Plus Ultra of 1928 had a 20-round magazine (Vol 3).1112 And the unsigned French collector text says some wartime pistols “went to full automatic” by malfunction.13

Any weapon that “shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger” is a machine gun under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b).14 A machine gun is lawfully possessed by an individual only if it was lawfully possessed before 19 May 1986 and is registered (18 U.S.C. § 922(o)); the Borchardt dive’s Vol 9 sets out the Olofson decision on malfunctioning pistols. Two consequences for a Ruby owner:

  • A Ruby-type marked or sold as select-fire, or a Plus Ultra whose capability is unknown, should not be acquired without a registration check.
  • A semi-automatic Ruby-type that doubles has a sear or disconnector fault. It must be taken out of use and repaired (Vol 6), both for safety and because a pistol that fires automatically by design or by a “regular self-acting mechanism” is the thing the statute describes.

8.9 Michigan

A Ruby-type is not an antique under Michigan’s definition either: MCL 750.231a(2) reaches only firearms “manufactured in or before 1898”.15 It is a pistol under MCL 28.421 (“a loaded or unloaded firearm that is 26 inches or less in length”), and the ordinary Michigan pistol rules apply: the licence to purchase under MCL 28.422, or the concealed pistol licence exemption under MCL 28.422a, with the seller’s sales record, which for a pistol goes to local police within ten days.161718 The Borchardt dive’s Vol 8 quotes each section. Michigan’s 2023 safe-storage provision, MCL 28.429, applies to a Ruby-type as to any firearm.19

Federal C&R status makes no difference to the Michigan pistol rules: no Michigan curio exemption was found in the sections read.

8.10 A checklist before buying

  1. Is it what it says? Read the legend and the frame marks (Vol 5). “Ruby” on the slide is not proof of Gabilondo, and an oval on the frame is not proof of French service.
  2. Is it safe? Firing pin free and retracting; hammer reaches full cock; safety blocks; trigger resets; barrel free of bulges (Vol 6). If not, it is a display piece until repaired.
  3. Does it double? Check trigger reset with an empty pistol. A pistol that will not reset, or a listing that says “select fire” or “full auto”, stops the purchase until its status is settled.
  4. Does the magazine fit? Seat it, check the catch, compare the magazine’s letters with the frame’s code (Vol 7).
  5. Is the story documented? Capture papers and provenance are what the market pays for; get copies.
  6. Michigan paperwork. Licence to purchase or CPL; sales record.

8.11 What could not be established

  • Realised prices at Rock Island Auction; any dated, single-pistol auction result.
  • How ATF’s sporting-purposes condition applies to importing a Ruby-type.
  • Whether any automatic Ruby-type is on the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.

References

Footnotes

  1. Legacy Collectibles, “SOLD - Spanish Alkartasuna Ruby Pistol Rig - GI Bring-back w/ Capture Doc”, item 36083, https://legacy-collectibles.com/36083-spanish-alkartasuna-ruby-pistol-rig-gi-bring-back-w-capture-doc, consulted 2026-10-19. Image file names on the page are dated 2025-04-03. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Collectors Firearms, Houston, “WWI French Army ‘Ruby’ Pistol (PR56239)”, https://collectorsfirearms.com/156994-wwi-french-army-ruby-pistol-pr56239.html, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩2

  3. Rock Island Auction Company, sale 2062, lot 221, “Spanish Ruby Semi-Automatic Pistol with Capture Papers”, https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/2062/221/spanish-ruby-semiautomatic-pistol-with-capture-papers, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩2

  4. Rock Island Auction Company, sale 1025, lot 411, “Three Spanish Semi-Automatic Ruby Type Pistols”, https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/1025/411/three-spanish-semiautomatic-ruby-type-pistols, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  5. Rock Island Auction Company, sale 1025, lot 2843, “Five Ruby Style Semi-Automatic Pistols”, https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/1025/2843/five-ruby-style-semiautomatic-pistols, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩2

  6. Rock Island Auction Company, sale 5021, lot 1012, “Spanish Gabilondo y Urresti Ruby Semi-Automatic Pistol”, https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/5021/1012/spanish-gabilondo-y-urresti-ruby-semiautomatic-pistol, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩ ↩2

  7. 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(16), Cornell Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/921, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  8. 27 CFR 478.11, “Curios or relics”, eCFR, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-27/chapter-II/subchapter-B/part-478/subpart-B/section-478.11, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  9. ATF, Firearms Curios or Relics List — January 1972 through April 2025 (ATF P 5300.11), Section II, read from the Internet Archive copy https://web.archive.org/web/20260426215034if_/https://www.atf.gov/media/19856/download, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  10. 18 U.S.C. § 925(e), Cornell Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/925, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  11. Ian McCollum, “Spanish Eibar/Ruby Pistols”, Forgotten Weapons, 19 October 2012, reader comments, https://www.forgottenweapons.com/spanish-eibarruby-pistols/, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  12. Manfredo Monforte Moreno, “Arma corta española”, Academia de las Ciencias y las Artes Militares, 27 February 2026, https://www.acami.es/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026-04-09-CMN-PTM-Arma-corta-espanola-web.pdf, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  13. Unsigned collector text on the Ruby pistol, Tir Sportif Chabris, https://tirsportifchabris.fr/blog/vue-eclatee-pistolet-ruby, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  14. 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), Cornell Legal Information Institute, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5845, consulted 2026-10-19. ↩

  15. MCL 750.231a, https://legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-750-231a, as quoted in the Borchardt C-93 dive Vol 8, consulted 2026-10-18. ↩

  16. MCL 28.421, https://legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-28-421, as quoted in the Borchardt C-93 dive Vol 8, consulted 2026-10-18. ↩

  17. MCL 28.422, https://legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-28-422, as quoted in the Borchardt C-93 dive Vol 8, consulted 2026-10-18. ↩

  18. MCL 28.422a, https://legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-28-422a, as quoted in the Borchardt C-93 dive Vol 8, consulted 2026-10-18. ↩

  19. MCL 28.429, https://legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-28-429, as quoted in the Borchardt C-93 dive Vol 8, consulted 2026-10-18. ↩

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