I would be interested in knowing who these guns actually belong to. It's pretty standard practice in large gun auctions such as this (or larger) to state the name of the estate, if that is the case, or to give the name of the collector who accumulated the guns over a large period of time. This catalog does not state the owner, nor does the on-line information. I could certainly have bought without knowing that information, it's just one more thing that's unusual about this auction. Whoever came up with the pre-sale estimates of prices certainly was overly optimistic. Very few even reached the lower estimate of the range of prices stated. And, I guess all auction catalogs have a degree of "auction speak" in their descriptions, we're all accustomed to that. This one seems overly stuffy in some of the descriptions, with their pretend British speak, and they just plain missed some descriptions, calling several straight actioned boxlock guns as scalloped actions, even calling some sidelocks as scalloped. I don't know what that means. Lots of room for improvement, maybe they will be able to pull it off. I would love to have a RELIABLE auction house for sporting arms in the South. I don't think it's here yet. Just my final thought.
