If you sleeve a gun you make it into a shooter, not a collector, but if the barrels are marginal it is not really a collector anyways. New barrels would be great, but at the cost of many tens of thousands not going to happen in all but the extreme cases. Guns at auction are there for a reason. Not enough value to sell on consignment in most cases but still worth something. I am stuck trying to figure out what I might do with a gun coming up on the sealed bid. It needs sleeving but by then I would be upside down in the gun, with no chance to ever get my money back. But the gun is so rare I might never find another one. They made maybe 300 total, over 120 years ago. But rare does not mean super valuable in this case. So do I just do smart thing and add this gun to the "ones which got away list" or just buy it and make one more money pit?
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