The single-shot, percussion-style pistols known as derringers have almost certainly not been used in violent crimes since the 19th-century old west in the US – but police allege that a robber clad in pajama pants brandished one of those weapons at an Oklahoma liquor store recently.

Dyllon Redfern, 24, stands accused of going into Primo’s Wine and Spirits in Tulsa on the night of 5 December but being turned away from buying anything because he did not have his identification. Store employees later told Tulsa police that Redfern, who was in pajama pants and a hooded sweatshirt, left and came back with what they described as an “old timey musket”, pointed the gun at them and demanded cash as well as their IDs.

Early the next morning, someone at a QuikTrip store in the same shopping center reported seeing Redfern. Officers who searched the area found him in a nearby parking garage, carrying cash and an ID stolen from Primo’s – as well as an antique gun.

Tulsa police said in a Facebook statement that they booked Redfern with first-degree robbery. They noted that the derringer they purportedly seized from him was known as a “muff” or “pocket” pistol, and published a picture of it.

Perhaps the most infamous use of that style of small, easily concealable pistol was the 14 April 1865 assassination of president Abraham Lincoln in Washington DC at the hands of Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

The Tulsa police’s statement invited Facebook users with expertise on antique guns to “chime in” on Redfern’s arrest.

One commenter noted that the scrolling on the derringer suggested it was manufactured in about the 1850s – and was “possibly worth more than there was in that cash register”.

Another said it’s possible there were only about 500 of those particular guns ever made, and that it appeared to be “a very rare and valuable weapon”.

Others debated which character from the old western-set video game Red Dead Redemption 2 Redfern most resembled.

Redfern would face at least 10 years in prison if eventually convicted of first-degree robbery, according to Oklahoma state law.