Winchester Mystery Mansion Gun Collection

[huntpotter]

Hey yall. I was just thinking about the good ol college days, when I spent some time down in the SF bay area. 1997-98. I took a trip to the Winchester mansion in San Jose. They have quite a Winchester collection there. It was really cool to see all the early and rare Winchesters. Some were prototypes, or early first off the line guns. It is an interesting place to see, because the widow of the Winchester fortune spent her last years obsessed with spirits, and was supposedly haunted by ghosts of people killed by Winchester products.

Anyway, anybody else from here visited there? Any impressions on the Winchester collection....

Read More

 

[Unka-Boo]

While there were a lot of great and rare guns, it was smaller than I expected.

After spending an hour in that crazy house I felt kinda jipped by the museum...

 

[spider]

Is that the place that has all those doors that lead to no where?

 

[huntpotter]

Is that the place that has all those doors that lead to no where?

Yep, same place.

 

[coosbaycreep]

I went to the mystery house just recently, and was fairly disappointed with the house, and extremely disappointed with the gun collection.

Their firearm "museum" basically had one gun of each model winchester made up until a certain year, and a few others, but it was quite small. They had a few cool guns, but it's not nearly as good as you would expect when visiting the house of the heiress to the winchester fortune. Seems like the tour was around $30 too.

If you like gun museums, Aberdeen Proving ground in MD is awesome, both for their tanks and artillery, and their small arms. There's a place in Wisconsin called House on the Rock that also has a whole ton of cool guns, stuff like mult-barreled BP pistols, antique guns, and a bunch of fake guns that just look cool. The rest of the stuff there is awesome and well worth a stop if you're ever in that area and get off on oddball stuff.

I was in Oklahoma last month, and was hoping to go to a firearms museum there that supposedly houses the largest private firearms collection in the world (J.M. Davis?), but didn't get the chance.

 

[huntpotter]

Their firearm "museum" basically had one gun of each model winchester made up until a certain year, and a few others, but it was quite small. They had a few cool guns, but it's not nearly as good as you would expect when visiting the house of the heiress to the winchester fortune. Seems like the tour was around $30 too.

That is too bad. It seems like there were more guns there, when I went, 12 years ago or so. They also had some other Winchester products, from the early Winchester years, like Winchester razors, and Winchester tools. I think the tour was $10 or so, when I went.

 

[FlyGuy]

Always been a fan of Winchesters. Next time I'm down there I'll have to check that "haunted" house

 

[Searcher451]

If you go in expecting an NRA-quality arms museum, you'll be disappointed. If you go in expecting nothing more than a good time, you'll be more than happy with the experience. Even the website is worth a look:

<broken link removed>

It's also at least somewhat arms-related, which is what you'd expect from the folks with a name like Winchester.

 

[Cougfan2]

If you want to see a truly impressive collection of not ony Winchester firearms, but others as well, the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in Cody, WY is incredible.