Colt Presidents Pair Diamondback and Combat Elite Cased Set

Most cased Colt pairs are factory commemoratives built in runs of a few hundred. This one was built for the man whose name is on the door. It's the inaugural Colt Presidents Series set, a matched Diamondback and Combat Elite given to Colt's President, Gary French, and his wife, and it came straight out of French's own collection. The grips tell the story before any letter does.

Look at the 1911. The ivory grips carry French's interlocking GNF monogram on the right panel, hand-engraved into the surface, with a gold Colt 150th anniversary medallion set above it. That medallion dates the set to Colt's sesquicentennial, marking it firmly to 1986. The Combat Elite wears its blued slide over a high-polish nickel frame, the two-tone look that defined the model, with the Colt's PT.F.A. Mfg. Co. Hartford address rolled into the right side. Up top, the slide reads Combat Elite between its star flanks.

The revolver is the companion piece, and it's the one with personality. A Diamondback in .38 Special, finished in deep Colt Royal Blue with a bright nickel cylinder, wearing ivory stocks that read Diamond Lil in old English script. That was the gun for French's wife. The rampant colt sits proud on the frame, and the Colt 150 medallion repeats on the grip.

Both pieces sit in a walnut and glass presentation case lined in deep red, the Colt logo etched into the front pane. The set ships with authentic documentation tracing its connection to Gary French, the paperwork that turns two presentation guns into one-of-one corporate history.

A buyer here isn't getting a commemorative off a dealer shelf. You're getting the personal guns of the man who ran Colt, in the configuration the factory built for him alone, with the letters to prove every word of it. Sets like this don't come up. When they belong to the president himself, they essentially never do.