Quote:
Originally Posted by sammyg2
$12.5k for an old rifle? No offense, but you were fortunate not to be the dumbest guy in the room 
Seriously, is the price so high because people see it as a speculative investment or it is just something they want to have really really bad? |
Purely speculative investment. The guys paying that kind of scratch for old guns have more or less ruined it for us guys that actually like to shoot them. Like the guys in our little P-car world that pronounce it "Poorsh" they have nary a clue what they are looking at beyong its potential ROI.
I well remember when we were buying "really nice" old single shots like that for a couple grand (tops), and going out and shooting them. We were buying old Trapdoors for $100 in very good, shootable condition. Your average Sharps '74 was $400-$500, High Walls, Rolling Blocks and Hepburns half of that. I bought a Ballard Pacific for $200, fixed it up, and started hunting with it.
No more. Those days are gone. The speculative investors have driven the price of even average "shooters" out of reach of, well, us average shooters. It's sad. Most of these guns will never speak again.