Robert "Rusty" White discovered the value of rare collectibles early on in life. Inspired by the 1959 Civil War movie The Horse Soldiers-set in his hometown of Newton, Miss.—he combed local railroad tracks with a metal detector as a teenager, seeking treasure. When that didn't yield much of a return, he put a placard in the window of his father's hardware store that read "Antique Guns Wanted," which prompted a local farmer to bring in a pair of pistols he claimed he'd dug up in a field. Rusty bought the guns for $200—"My father got me a loan at the bank that I was responsible for repaying," White says—and kept them until he needed funds for college a few years later, riding the bus to Dallas to seek an appraisal from an antique-arms dealer.
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