Walter O’Connor (1933-2018) was a legendary collector and dealer of antique firearms and powder horns, active from the 1940s until his death. He began collecting at the age of 7 when a family friend gifted him an 1842 musket carried in the Mexican-American War. Soon after, he bought a group of 19^th century weapons for $25 from his father’s business associate, raising the money by mowing lawns in his neighborhood.

In 1958, Walter began a long working relationship with the Valley Forge Historical Society, building their collection into a world-class arms museum. In time, he oversaw some of the largest appraisals and liquidations of movie studio arms collections.

In 1967 he appraised the arms collection of Paramount Studios and in 1970 he was a part of a team put together by David Weitz to liquidate the MGM Studios collection. Walter worked to catalogue 700 lots of guns and other arms to be offered during a major sale.

Walter’s close connections with the studios inspired him to work on his own collection of movie memorabilia. One of his great interests was Gone with the Wind, and he searched for years to locate items associated with the film. In fact, it was his lifelong dream to establish a Gone with the Wind museum.

In October of 1983, Walter caught a lucky break: the independent prop house Cinema Mercantile liquidated its holdings through Butterfields (since acquired by Bonhams in 2002). Cinema Mercantile was founded in the 1920s by independent filmmakers to provide movie props at competitive prices, and many major studios used their wares, including MGM, Selznick International, and Warner Bros. Butterfields held a 400-lot auction of antique furniture, paintings, and decorative arts and a 300,000-item tag sale on the premises of Cinema Mercantile.

Walter O’Connor attended both the tag sale portion, where he snatched up some Gone with the Wind items that had gone unidentified by the auction house, and the fine sale, where he bought Belle Watling’s lamp and several other highlights of the present sale.

Walter died suddenly in 2018 and his estate sold his extensive arms collection at auction later that year. The movie collection, however, sold privately to a third party who spent several years identifying and screen-matching individual pieces to the film.

As a fan of the auction process, it was Walter's wish for collectors to have the opportunity to bid on and own the treasures he held closely for so long.