There are a few of us out there who like to collect customized guns. I would say that the value I personally place on a gun has to do first and foremost with the provenance, followed by the quality of the modifications, chased by the desirability of the end product.
Because they are always of top quality, I find King guns to be very desirable. Work done by other quality shops and smiths is also of interest. The value on these is always quite subjective however, and personally I enjoy that. When a gun has no comparables I can set a value for the gun that is what *I* am happy paying, and stick to that. With the rise of the internet more comparables sort of emerge, in that I can be looking at a King modified gun and think of the selling price of other King modified guns, but still, each gun is almost always unique in regard to what has been changed on it.
Real provenance on a gun really does turn a modified gun into something special, even a C-word. For example, one of my favorite guns is this thing:
Which has been pretty extensively modified by King. Between the sight work and the speed holes in the hammer, and the clear action work, it's really be set up for someone to shoot in DA. The reason why starts to become clear if you flip it over:
Fortunately for me the owner of this gun in 1977 decided to write a letter to a guy who might know who Bill Keim was:
and Col. Askins responded:
So as an example of modifications improving the gun (making it one heck of a neat shooter, and showing some fantastic pre-ww2 gunsmithing), and being explained by provenance (this was a shooter for a man who had lost an arm in a heroic fashion), the overall effect is a greatly increased value.
On the other hand, let's take another Colt:
I bought this off of Gunbroker, it came out of a Florida pawn shop. I bid something like 75 bucks on it and won it. Didn't even realize I had done so. The gun was so undesirable that even though I had been a bad gunbroker-er and failed to realize I had won, when I contacted the pawn shops two weeks too late they were only too glad to actually complete the transaction.
The work done to it is interesting, but problematic. As near as I can tell it is shootable, the action is good, but the extractor was installed wrong and precludes me from actually putting bullets into the chambers. I've had kroil in it forever and I can't get it to budge to fix it. Someday I'll repair it.
Is this a valuable gun? No. Not at all. Does it have provenance? Only what a person makes up in their mind. I personally still greatly enjoy this gun because the gun itself *looks* like it has a story. I have fun with that... or at least I have $75 worth of fun with it.
Moving onto actual Smiths for a while, if we are talking "customized" but not modified, this is where we get into talking about incorrect stocks:
Here is a place I really love to be. This gun for example is a Non-Registered Magnum from about 1940 equipped with a fine set of Kearsarge stocks made by Charles Wendell. To my eye such a gun couldn't be much improved over what we are looking at here. As much as I like original, the folk art style beauty in a set of stocks like this really sets the gun off.
To go with another example of a S&W that is very neat being both modified and equipped with Kearsarge:
Here we have what started life as a .22/32 Heavy Frame Target, and sometime later was equipped with the 4" barrel and the King front sight. I added the Kearsarge stocks to complete the package to my liking. It's sort of a 'Virtual' pre war kit gun in that it appears to have all the proper parts for a pre-war Kit gun, but was modified later to actually fit that role. The finish gives us a bit of a clue as to when it might have been done as it is a post-war matte blue. Whatever the case is I love shooting it, and am happy as a clam about this "wrong" gun. What is the value of this one? Completely subjective, if I were to sell it I would have to pick some price and throw it out there to see if it would stick.
That's the thing though, a gun like this? I'm probably never going to sell. How would I replace it?
Speaking of which,
lets move onto another customized old S&W:
This one has had some serious stuff done to it:
Here, I have no actual proof of anything. I have only speculation. The thing is that I love the thing, and it speaks for itself. Regardless of who did the work, and for whom it was done, the work is absolutely top notch and fascinating. The idea seems to be that someone in the 1940s wanted a nice concealable gun in a cartridge that could stop a man, but that they could reload lightning quick... so they modernized a Model 3 DA and then refined it as they shot it to try to get it right? (The trigger guard was rounded off some time after the reblue, and I believe the Sanderson stocks were a later addition). It's overall a heck of a neat customized gun.
Value? I know what I paid for it, but that's it. What could I get for it? Who knows. (I must say that I personally harbor a theory that Elmer Keith had at least something to do with this one, and that Herb Bradley was the guy who did the work, as the gun did come out of a pawn hop in Idaho, but I could never confirm that, and likely never will unless someone online recognizes it).
Sometimes guns also prove to be a surprise. Case in point:
I thought King might have done this, but I wasn't sure until I lettered it:
Do I have an actual document that says King modified the sights? No. However, the front and rear sight blades are in fact King, and the gun clearly was in San Francisco. What are the chances that anyone but King did this? The thing is though, if I ever sold it, I wouldn't say it's a "King Modified" gun, I would say that I believe it is a King Modified gun, and give my evidence.
I personally would be happy to believe that evidence if someone sold it to me as such, however if they said it was 100% certainly a King gun I would have to object for two reasons. The first being that there isn't actual documentation supporting that claim, and the second is that
it just doesn't matter. This gun is great for what it is, a documented SFPD Police gun that was later modified to have some good sights, almost (but not provably) done at the D.W. King shop. If that's not good enough for the buyer, this is not the gun for them.
And one last surprise customized gun:
When I bought this it was advertised as a King modified Bisley, no mention of the 'Keith No. 5' grip shape. It wasn't a king however, which was clear when I got it. Couple months later the auction house sent me this:
So it was actually a Colt modified gun, in 1920 for an easily searched target shooter?...
What does that do the value?
In the end if you have a customized gun my advice is:
1) Find and document any real information you can on it.
2) Extensively photograph it to look for anything about the gun that might have been modified but no obvious.
3) Clearly separate speculation about who may have worked on the gun from fact, and be entirely clear about that.
4) Enjoy it for what it is. It's "wrong" yes, but wrong can be right, and more importantly it can be incredibly interesting.
5) Don't worry about value, buy it or own it because you love it. Value on so many of these can only really be established in an auction anyway.
