Ted, it sold for that because it was marked Falcon, and you had to know what you were looking at (which most buyers--especially of cheapies--don't) to know that it was an Uggie. If it were a more modern Uggie and not marked only with some importer's name, it would have cost more.
Given the fact that I've owned a bunch of Belgian guns--maybe even more than you--I'm well aware that they're not all knock-off cheapies. However, I thought maybe you'd been into the sauce more than a little when we started out talking about French guns, and you posted one from Belgium as an example. And it may well be a "good quality A&D", but there's simply too little information in that particular ad to judge much of anything. You didn't skip over the much higher priced French boxlocks to which I referred, did you? Off the same website . . . right there, under "French shotguns" . . . which is a darned good place to start, when you want to compare prices of French guns.
As for the comments about Helice, I spoke with JJ down at Champlin when I was doing an article on French guns, several years back. He had very good things to say about the Helice lockup--which, of course, is also evidenced by the fact that, after the V-C patent expired, there were plenty of St. Etienne guns made using the Helice system.
Stay off the sauce, Ted. And if you want to have an intelligent discussion on the pricing of FRENCH shotguns, then you might start out by posting FRENCH boxlock (non-sliding breech) examples rather than going next door to Belgium. Especially when French examples are readily available, on the very website you used.
Education these days, I guess, just ain't what it used to be.
Last edited by L. Brown; 05/06/12 07:21 PM.
