A friend of mine passed away in January 2014 who had been in the gun biz for about 50 years and just missed being on an Olympic shooting team, some of whom he trained . Ian forgot more about spoons than I will ever know. So Ian's extensive collection of everything from Assault weapons, target arms (swiss), sniper rifles, Springfield's to flintlocks went to auction in May and in November in OC CA. Everything Ian had was top notch. Ian's friend list was a virtual who is who in the Gun biz, SD Hughes, Ron Long, Tom Rowe, Lou Forte, Don Nygard, Gene Shuey, Joe Poyer, Donald Stoehr and Fred Datig among others.
In the first auction I didn't know it was Ians collection, where I bought a Homer Dangler custom Flintlock rifle and a custom half stock percussion rifle. After the auction I got to talking to the auctioneer about who had consigned a good potion of the arms and low and behold it was Ians estate. In the second auction I knew that a Parker Hale Volunteer LRML was going to come up, which I was going to go after and got for a song. So here it comes the virtual prize of Ians collection a SD Hughes Custom built 1877 LR Sharps rifle....that I wanted....Ian spent 30 large building that rifle, my cut off was 10 large and I stuck to that figure, it going for 13..8. From what I understand it went to a friend of Ian's in the audience. However as a consolation prize I got the following...an ED Brown Custom Marine Corps Sniper rifle in 308 with a McMillian A4 stock, hand lapped Shilen Barrel and the commercial version of the MC Unertl M3 sniper scope...and I know Ian is rolling over in his grave at what I got it for..but I think he would be happy that I got it as I was one of about 20 people Ian had wanted to leave something to.
