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Old is now what everyone wants

5K views 54 replies 26 participants last post by  9mil 
#1 ·
Our small local Gun shop has old bolt action 16 gauges and 12s and sometimes double barrels and various .22s.
Who wanted a Western Field bolt action 16 gauge back in the day. I may be wrong about the brand but think that is what it is, and looks like it was just unboxed, or single barrel 12 gauge Winchester. Well that is what I want but have to leave on the shelf to buy bread, so to speak. Every once in a while. He had a double barrel .410 Savage last year, not much money. Lovely piece of walnut and no rust or wear. One day he'll have a Rifle I will have to buy and have a reserve in my billfold for. an old long barrel Springfield .22 bolt action rifle, like I carried over my forearm all over the mountain. Or an old Remington or Winchester semi auto all steel and walnut .22.I really wanted that .410 ad maybe another will come along. New Guns or increased profitability. expensive cheap guns have no appeal for me.
 
#2 ·
A lot of jewels gather dust on the walls of gun shops and pawn shops. I have been know to dust some of them off. In the past year I have bought several. A Winchester bolt action target .22, a Win lite automatic shotgun (fiberglass barrel), and a Forehand, single shot .16 ga. The Forehand was interesting because it had a SSN engraved on it. Since the former owner was dead, I was able to identify who it belonged to. Both the shotgun and the owner were born in 1902.
 
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#7 ·
Everything cycles in and out of fashion,,,
It's just the time for "vintage" single-shots again.

I have a friend with three boys,,,
They all want rifles for Christmas.

With the ammo situation right now,,,
Single-shot rifles are looking better and better.

I like to "rescue" older single-shots myself,,,
I recently bought a Western-Field 815 (Mossberg 320) for $99 out the door.

I bought a $35 cantilever mount and a $39.00 Simmons 4X scope,,,
Now the rifle is giving me benched 3/4" groups at 75 yards.



My limit for a rescue rifle used to be $100,,,
But I'm afraid those days are past.

Until they cycle out of fashion,,,
And start going for $50 to $75 again.

Aarond

.
 
#5 ·
Darn few guns of any kind around right now, pistols especially. Even old "owl heads" (Iver Johnson) revolvers are getting way up there. It's a seller's market. That said, even older guns at inflated prices may be better buys than new ones with plastic stocks or frames. Junk (new or old) remains junk forever. Finding parts is easier today thanks to the internet but the supply of parted-out older guns seems to be shrinking for the same reason. Oh well.
 
#8 ·
Locutus, that is because you have no sense of "style." Style is like "soul" either you have it or you don't. Here let me have an expert explain style to you!
 
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#12 ·
Micro, Ruger now makes single shot mags for the 10-22, with a red top and follower.

When i was teaching my daughter to shoot a short a short stocked 10-22 at 7, it was impossible to keep her from dumping however many rounds were in the mag. So, I mad a couple of customized ones by opening up the mags, and adding a bent price of aluminum inside,which prevented the follower from going in very far. The limited them to 1 an 2 rounds.

She had to lock the bolt open, and insert a flag, then eject the mag and hand it to me before she got the next mag. She wasn’t quite frustrated enough to tell me she wasn’t going along anymore. And, of course part of her frustration was that her 12-year old brother got to shoot full ten round mags.
 
#13 ·
Some like corvettes with fiberglass bodies, others an older classic made of steel. Personal preference, all good. $30,000 truck or $3,000 truck - in the same mechanical conditiom both will take you places but you'll take the $3,000 truck further into brush you wouldn't take the other.

To me, plastic has no "soul". Great engineering and genius goes into creating injection molded plastic, modern metals, super=close tolerances, and precision personified to jmake a profit for owners who invest in robots that replace skilled craftspersons. Fewer humans even touch those guns each year. Same with automobiles, motorcycles, or classic tools.

When I handle ( some might say"stroke") a classic muzzle-loading rifle I know that the barrel alone started with women sorting through worn-out horseshoe nails separating cast iron from wrought iron to add to iron, carbon, and other things to be melted and hammered into strips by blacksmiths. After that, it took 3 skilled smiths to alternately heat and poujnd those strips around a rod just to have the basic barrel in round form. More heating, hammering and filing to get an octagon-shaped blank. Etc. Etc. Every wooden stock started with a saw or an axe. Cast parts wee done in sand molds. Rifling cut by hand, one groove at a time, each succeding cut one thickness of paper deeper than the last (I helped a gunsmith do this one time).

Are modern mass-produced firearms "better" ? Probably. They're just not my thing. Youngsters need to know how things used to be made or they'll have little appreciation for the world they'll soon inherit.Fewer skilled workers mean a world dependent on machines. M
 
#29 ·
#17 ·
I do have a Steyr Pro Hunter in.30-06 and a Ruger M77MKII all weather "boat paddle" in .308.
My 700 wears an HS Precision stock.
And my 760 is old and worn enough it doesn't matter.

I actually took the 760 on rainy days this season. Never took the M77 or Steyr to the field.

The #1 however is a sunny day rig only ;)
 
#18 ·
the thing about single shots: ammo dumps don't take long. seems like everybody with a semiauto just has to ammo dump a whole BX-25
I have several single shots and several bolt action rifles but when my wife and I practice home defense it is 15-22's standing, short range and a lot of ammo on silhouettes. We dont dump a lot of ammo shooting from the bench or shooting at clays 30 yards out off hand. The bench is for sighting in and making sure the rifles can hit something at longer range. I want to know I can hit small game accurately at a reasonable distance.
 
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#19 ·
Our club range is 25 and 50 on one side, 75 and 100 on the other.
Clays on the bank, like two dozen spread out are a fun way to burn ammo.
The ol lady hoses em from the bench w her 10/22 equipped w RDS.

I'll do the 25 and 50 w handguns, but its pretty boring.
I like 100 and out w rifles (offhand).
 
#22 ·
I'm a C&R and milsurp kinda guy to begin with. I too also picked up a Winchester T75 a while back and this Tommy Gun 10/22 kit recently. I'm in the midst of horse trading an FN49 for a .45 Thompson like pictured below. They're modern repos of old iron. PAX

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#30 ·
There hasn't been improvement in the practical functionally of a bolt action rifle since the invention of the Mauser in 1898. The extra value of older rifles is that, many times, they have a history. For some folks that is no value at all. I just wonder if 125 years from now, someone will be lovingly cleaning and carefully storing, a plastic rifle. Who know, they may be.
 
#32 · (Edited)
All are selling for more than I paid.

760's in .35 rem are pretty popular in areas where folks hunt whitetail deer in timber.
Close to being the PA state flower ;)

The #1 actually has some collector value, first yr made, only 80 of them in that config/chambering. That and the better than avg wood.....

Sakos are well made, slick. Trim, the pre Garcia ones are sought after. Not just by collectors.
They are simply NICE rifles.

Some people don't care about subtle differences. For some, real or imagined, the differences in fit and feel are worth it.

IMHO if it doesn't fit it aint worth diddly. I am however pretty average and when I find stuff that fits, set it up for me.........it makes shooting good, esp on game afield, rather easy.
 
#34 ·
The Sako was scored at about half market value (rifle alone), and it sat a while. Bore was full of dust. Scope was fogged.

I dunno how many Ruger American and Savage Axis rifles they sold ahead of it LOL
A bunch I'd bet. The vast majority of gun buyer's are cheap bastard's!
They mainly buy the cheapest gun they can find, and top it with an even cheaper POS scope.
 
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