When I was about eight or nine years old, ca 1952, we lived in a neighborhood that was built about 1910, all four-square and craftsman style houses. A few doors down the street from me lived Mr. & Mrs. R, who were about age 60-65, which seemed very old to me at the time. They were friendly, and we often spoke as I roamed about the neighborhood, playing and walking to and from school.
I was invited in one time, and was surprised to see Mr R's easy chair had a small bronze cannon just in front of it for a foot rest, facing the front door, and he had a pair of flintlock pistols on the table along side the chair. That was cool, but it got better. Mr. R was an antique arms collector. He showed me to the basement, which was very well lit, but unfurnished except for the boiler and a large table/workbench. Where the footer met the walls, there was a ledge about a foot off the floor and eight inches wide that went all around the perimeter of the ~25x40' room.
There were long guns of every description sitting on their butt plates on this ledge, leaning against the wall, completely around the room. These were the "old guns" he told me. His "new guns" were hundreds of civil war era percussion rifles, tied in bundles of ten or twelve, stacked horizontally on the floor like bundles of kindling. He told me he had "about" 2000 long guns in that room. He took me on a tour, taking down one from the ledge here and there and telling me about it. I remember a matchlock, a wheellock, a blunderbuss, some middle eastern arms with fancy wood carving and unusual curves to my cowboy movie educated eye, some long, graceful Kentucky rifles and flintlocks forever.
The gun that sticks in my mind the most was a wall gun, the biggest thing in his collection. It was matchlock, taller than me, had a barrel that seemed about the diameter of my wrist, and was so heavy I could hardly manipulate it. I remember thinking "It must take a really big strong man to shoulder and fire this thing" and Mr. R. explained what it was and showed me the Y shaped support that went into a hole in the top of the wall. He told me it weighed 37 lbs and could hit a man at 500 yards.
Shortly after that, we moved away, and Mr. R died a couple years later. I wonder to this day what became of his collection. Other than a major museum, I've never seen so many muzzle loading guns in one place in all my life.