View Single Post
 
Old 06-22-2018, 10:48 AM
JSR III's Avatar
JSR III JSR III is offline
SWCA Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Massachusetts USA
Posts: 9,575
Likes: 3,695
Liked 8,924 Times in 3,545 Posts
Default

From the COLT web site.

"ORDER YOUR AUTHENTIC COLT ARCHIVE LETTER USING OUR SECURE FORM."

Quote:
The word Authenticity gives sellers carte blanche to lie through their teeth. And no this not merely semantics, it's misleading and unfair business practice.
However none should be supersized by all of this with S&W track record.
Bob Thorton, apparently you have a hair somewhere for the S&W corporation. Unfortunately, you do not seem to have a handle on where S&W History letters come from or the purpose of said letters.

So let me explain it to you as I understand it.

Originally, Roy Jinks was an employee of the S&W Company and also did the History letters as part of his duties. He also attended store events, Shot Shows, NRA conventions etc. representing S&W. At some point, the S&W company decided that they no longer wanted to be involved with the history letters or have a S&W historian and severed their relationship with Mr. Jinks. The history letter function was moved to the S&WHF with Roy continuing to do the letters and subsequently adding Don Mundell to assist. Many of the shipping ledgers that are used to verify the information that ends up in the letters are owned by Roy Jinks personally and were purchased by him from the Wesson family when they no longer wanted to pay the storage fees at the facility where the records were being stored.

The letter only goes into these ledgers and "authenticates" that a gun with serial number "123456" was shipped on this date, to this destination, and left the factory with an X inch barrel, certain finish, and certain stocks/grips. In addition, there is added information about the given model, possibly how many the company produced in total and other interesting facts that may be of interest to the inquirer.

No where does the letter guarantee that the gun being inquired about is guaranteed to be that gun but only that a gun with that serial number did in fact ship from the factory and in what configuration.

This only helps the customer to determine if the gun in hand could actually be real based on factory records. It is not an appraisal of the value nor a guarantee that the gun in question is real and not a fake. Only that a gun like that was shipped from the factory.

I don't think that anyone in their right mind could assume that for $75 one could get any more than this.
__________________
James Redfield
LM #497
The Following 3 Users Like Post: