44-60 bottle neck

[Don McDowell]

Sam, Seller's book on page 339 says it's a very rare Sharps cartridge and was discontinued in 1875. Marcot's book says that they could find no cartridge boxes or labels for it, but somewhere in what remains of the Sharps records there is a notation that it Sharps never made that cartridge, but UMC and Winchester both loaded it. Which isn't that unusual as UMC and Winchester loaded a number of cartridges for Sharps rifles that the Sharps factory didn't.
I can't find all the reprints of the Sharps catalogs at the moment, but I do seem to recall seeing the 1 7/8 inch case listed in their cartridge listings...

At any rate it was loaded with a 380 gr paper patch bullet and 60 grains of powder. Should make a good midrange/silhouette cartridge, and would probably do a pretty fair job on big game.