Dealer, Officer Try to Auction Shootout Gun

To some it’s just a hunk of finely machined steel with deadly potential. To others, it may be a piece of history with a premium price tag.

To a Simi Valley gun dealer, it may represent a quick profit.

Chris Biller, manager of Greta’s Firearms & Training, hopes to auction off a 9-millimeter Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol because it was fired by an LAPD detective in the blazing gunfight with two armor-clad bank robbers in North Hollywood.

Biller said he acquired the gun when the LAPD officer, who asked not to be named, traded it in for a more powerful 15-shot .45-caliber semiautomatic.

Biller, who served 28 years in the LAPD, said he told the detective the gun could be worth thousands of dollars to collectors because it was used in a notorious gunfight, and they agreed to offer the gun for sale by auction and split any profits.

“Some people may think it’s gruesome, but this gunfight was an extraordinary event and there are plenty of collectors in the Midwest and Texas who would want to purchase an authenticated gun from a cop who was there,” Biller said.

The Smith & Wesson Corp. appeared to be pleased when it found out about the gun, Biller said. Executives of the Springfield, Mass.-based gun maker thought that the LAPD officers had all used a competitor’s handgun in the much-publicized fight.

“But Smith & Wesson didn’t show much interest in obtaining the gun for themselves,” Biller said. “They referred me to an East Coast auctioneer who may be interested.” Biller is waiting for a reply from the auctioneer as well as from a Southern California auctioneer.

The 9-millimeter Beretta is the standard issue sidearm for Los Angeles police officers, who are allowed to buy and carry similar guns on their own, with departmental permission.

Whether other officers involved in the gunfight could profit off their handguns is not clear.

According to some auction houses, the guns that the two bank robbers, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, used may have more value to collectors than the police weapons.

“I think more people may want to get their hands on the robbers’ guns, primarily because of their notoriety and the fact that there were only two of them, compared with the hundreds of cops who were at the scene,” said Ira Goldberg, an auctioneer at Superior Auction Galleries in Beverly Hills.

But those guns are probably permanently unobtainable. The robbers’ most dramatic armaments, the assault rifles that ripped off withering blasts of bullets at surrounding police, were illegally converted to machine guns. Under federal law, they could not be sold to most private citizens. Other weapons, including several handguns, could theoretically be sold, but the department’s policy is to destroy seized guns after legal proceedings are completed.

During the shootout, police borrowed six semiautomatic rifles, two semiautomatic shotguns and four cases of ammo, together worth about $8,000, from B & B Sales in North Hollywood. A salesman at B & B declined to say whether there was any interest from gun collectors in buying them.

But the manager of Pony Express Guns & Archery in North Hills expressed skepticism that the weapons of the North Hollywood shootout will hold historical value.

“A gun becomes valuable to collectors only because of the person who used it or the event it was used in,” said the manager. “Jesse James’ guns are valuable because of who he was. The guns that Custer used in the Battle of Little Big Horn would have great value as well.”

But events like the North Hollywood shootout are too common these days, he said. “I think that this event will fade from people’s memories,” he said.

And used 9-millimeter police Berettas, even those used by officers in a gunfight, fetch only about $250 on the open market, he said.