collecting is an addiction, isn't it?
Wonderful, you must have quite a variety of different styles and sizes. Hopefully you've tried to obtain from the sellers some info as to where they were found, and in what context (ruins, riverbed, possible battle site, etc). That might help answer questions about dates, especially for the hand cannons which must have disappeared from the scene when muskets became available although that process must have been gradual as well. Has anything been published in Portugal about these things? Any academics doing research to your knowledge? Maybe you can work with one of these guys so that we eventually have a published article, at least, about them.
I'm sure that this is not just a crazy idea of mine. Wasn't our late forum colleague, "Matchlock" up in Germany, quite serious about very early firearms as well?
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