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Old 04-28-2010, 05:00 AM
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Hammerdown Hammerdown is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
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Hi
To me collecting gun's is a Personal thing and the focus is set to each collector. Condition is everything and finding ones unfired or still like new is very hard today as so many are out there grabbing them up, because as we know most of the Cream is Long gone and all ready in serious collectors hands so it drives the prices sky High to a Point where a modest collector like myself can not add certain models, nor would not pay what the seller thinks his gun is worth.


Many years ago, I had started collecting Model number revolvers, but have moved all of them to now have Pre-Models and mostly 5 screw other than my 4 screw Model 48's which were never offered as Five screw models to begin with.The ones I have kept are 90% and above and that is what I look for when purchasing gun's to add to my collection, but it limits adding new ones as I said, The New In Box ones are very deep in older collectors hands.



One thing that has always frustrated me is the mention of refinishing that seems to offend serious collector's. I have seen many refinished in serious collectors hands, but they tend to live with it so long as the factory refinished them. I feel if a refinisher does a good enough job, any gun qualifies for a good pick whether or not it was the factory that did it, they are all still refinished, so why is it all right to the serious collectors if the factory did it ?



I have also seen Factory refinishing that is not of the best quality with weak roll mark's and stampings as the older stamp's and tooling for making these stamps and roll marks are long gone, yet it does not offend the serious collector so long as there is date code stamps on the gun, which seems silly to me as they are still refinished no matter who did them and not very eye appealing to me that way with weak stampings.



On the other end of that spectrum, you see those that feel low serial numbers make one more desirable. I agree they are "IF" they are of upper quality not "holster burned" and show high levels of wear to the high edges, which drives down the level of eye appeal, collectibility or over all price of what the gun should be worth to me. I was at a Louisville, Kentucky show a few years ago, and a Man had a Low serial number K-22. It was serial number K-311 if I remember correctly.




He felt it was worth a King's Ransom due to it's lower serial number but at Best it was around a 70% Gun, showing wear on the end of the sides of the barrel, high edges of the cylinder & frame, and had almost no bluing left on the extractor rod due to so much use. He had it priced at $1000.00 and was walking the floor showing it to anyone that would Listen to him trying to market it as a very low super collectible. I saw him leave later with it in hand as he headed to his car, so I guess other's felt the Lower condition was not desirable to add to their collections either...
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