Hi Bill, I am up in years too! My brother and I have owned over 140 English double rifles (mostly from 1870's to 1898) since 1971. We are down to a few left. He has a Holland and Holland 8 Bore Paradox that hasn't sold for almost 9 months and is now at Holland and Holland's Dallas office for sale. I have a cased Purdey 28 Bore underlever hammer double rifle with many accessories all original in very very good condition. It sold in the 2012 Julia auction for $20,150.00. I have it listed for $11,800.00 and no bites except for a couple of trade offers. Some of the rifles we sold on Gunsinternational (a great site) and some on Julia's Auction, who were also fantastic to deal with. The dealers are trying to keep the prices up, I hope it works!
That Purdey sounds very interesting---where was it 30 years ago when any decent double was hard to come by.
I was fortunate to sell a number of my better high grades before the market crashed. But I stubbornly kept a number for old times sake.
I agree that dealers are doing their best to keep the prices up and hoping that a good trade deal may come about. I suspect that younger collectors are using auction houses to get pieces for their collection and avoiding dealers. Times do change and us older guys have trouble accepting the changes.
