Quote:
Originally Posted by jay73
Typically, I'm not a fan or advocate of refinished revolvers, excluding factory refinished since it's hard for me to tell any difference. The gun is only original once. However, once it's been refinished, engraved or modified, I'm more open to refinishing. That's only an opinion and all are welcome to disagree.
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Okayyyyyy.....
First, I'll state that I fully understand the rights of private property. It's your gun, and you can do what you want with it.
That said, I'll give my take on this-
It's a tragedy.
When you acquired the gun, it was a nice and interesting example of a type of engraving contemporary to the gun which was quite popular in the southwest back in the time of that gun. It was actually a very nice example of the engraving often attributed to W&K. I'm not wild about punch engraving, but I admire it as the poor man's engraving of that era. Granted, the man was no Ed McGivern or Jelly Bryce or Jerry Campbell, but he obviously had some association with law enforcement and rambled around the west doing various jobs. With the ever growing databases on ancestry sites, something truly interesting may turn up about him someday. According to Post #73 here-
Registered magnum. worth it?, his son flew 24 missions in the ETO as a bombardier in a B-24, so I'll assume he at least had the ability to instill character in his son!
Nevertheless, the gun stood on its own as a really great example of a Reg Mag decorated in a funky style that was very popular back in the day of that gun.
When you are done, there will be one more refinished gun in the Reg Mag fold.
WHOOPEE! It still ain't original, and a cool gun and a man's history is lost forever.
IMO, just sell a gun if you don't like period modifications like pawn shop engraving or King alterations and buy an original gun.