Watching, bidding and not winning on my desired lots is both frustrating and saving me a lot of money. Every lot I have tracked or bid on seems to be going for 150+% of estimate. Either estimates are uniformly low, to generate bidding interest, or there is a lot of free money chasing the same things I’m after, or I have extremely good taste in guns. Wish I had that luck with lottery numbers. I did win several lots in accessories and gun related stuff. But if I like 600-800 gun it sells for 2600. It figures when the pound is weak my bidding outcomes is weaker. Anyone else seeing good prices for the seller but no great values for the buyer?

I've just had a look and see what you mean! Some of the prices obtained are well above what I would have expected. The Gun Trade has been depressed of late; maybe it's on the up again. With the advent of the demise of lead shot here in a couple of year's time I would not have expected things to look so good for selling prices.

I was recently given a cased Thomas Bland hammer gun; Damascus barrels with non-rebounding back-locks but re-proofed in 1991 for 70mm. Nitro as the gun shop owner said nobody wanted it and he couldn't sell it! I could find no fault with it. I have told him that if he gets any more similar guns then let me know and I'm happy to offer a price that we both feel comfortable with. Lagopus.....

I thought from all that’s been said the old SxS were being given away…. Silly me

Well if they were giving guns away they forgot to give any to me. Out of 11 total guns I bid on or left a presale bid I won just as many as my Powerball grand prize lotteries. Exactly three went for just above the high estimate while everything else went for 150-300+% above high estimate. Both Grant side levers escaped me, again. I love the looks of those Grants. Hope other did better than I did. Still have the sealed bid and rusty junk auction coming up.

Looking at the 31 12 bore Box locks in their main sale, they all sold although some at bottom estimate so Simon and Johnny’s video seems to have been effective.
That includes a couple of 2” chamber guns which you would think would be difficult to move in the present market. One of those was a Greener DH33 that went for almost double its top estimate.
As expected the British .410 boxlocks all went very well despite light weights and 2 1/2” chambers.

What did the Dickson go for?

You guys have been listing to Ed too intently!

Brent,

The Dickson trigger plate action went for £5,000 ( estimate £1,800 to £2,300).

That's 1/2 or even less than 1/2 of what I expected.

Yes I drove up the Greener to 1500 and gave up.

It had a lot of issues. The top lever was pitted and metal was actually gone. Engraving was very worn. The stock was cracked and had shrinkage issues. Thought I might steal that one but it went to the moon.

I bid on 10 for a client. He only got 2 and had to bump his max bid 600 more to get one of the H&H he wanted.

This was the one I was interested in. The Hi-Standard in .22 format was bought by the US military in 1941 to use to train troops on pistol warfare. In 1942 OSS was organized and bought 3,000 of them in silenced form. CIA later bought another 3,000 when it was organized in 1947. I carried one of these in Vietnam in 1968 over into Laos. I don't know whether it was OSS or CIA, probably the former. There were several at a base I often went to in Afghanistan.

Holt's did not actually claim this Hi-Standard was one of the OSS or CIA guns but they sure left the impression it might have been.
https://auctions.holtsauctioneers.c...++1052+&refno=++177904&saletype=


Unfortunately, it is not. (had it been, of course the price would have skyrocketed.) Here is an article I wrote for the Special Forces Association on the pistol.
https://specialforces78.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/0817-Sentinel-News.pdf

edit...and there is something odd about the angle of that magazine. No advertisement anywhere shows that.

Read ads carefully and Cavaet Emptor.

Yeah, I put bids of 2x the high estimate of a few lots and won nothing.

Good article Gene.

As a school boy in the late 50’s we had a school organised visit to a local gun collector (those were the days).

He demonstrated a silenced .22 auto pistol in his small back yard by emptying a magazine skywards. He seems to have assumed that this was safe in the middle of a town of 70,000 people.

From my visual memory I am fairly certain it was a Hi-Standard.

The example at Holts is a Model B, and the marking “Property of United States” shows it was supplied to the UK under Lend-Lease possibly before Pearl Harbour.

I have recently seen a very well engineered Parker-Hale adapter made to clamp on to the barrel and foresight of a Colt Woodsman to provide a threaded muzzle adaptor for their sound moderator. I was told that the adapters were produced at the request of Special Operations Executive.

That Hi-Standard looks like something Mrs Peel would tuck in her garter belt

eeb, the hammer gun was certainly given to me at no charge. It came via my Brother-in-Law who went to the shop and was offered it for nothing but thought of me and I gladly received it. To add to that I was looking for a Russian Baikal shotgun with which to do some steel shot testing, on the basis that it is nigh on impossible to do any damage to a Baikal, so I contacted a Gun Dealer who I know quite well and the reply was 'I've two; which one do you want?' He didn't want anything for that either. It is a 12 bore O/U in used but good condition. The situation with plain, no frills, English side by side box lock non-ejectors is that nobody here seems to want them. Guns that when we were youngsters we thought it really something to own are now going for a song. Lagopus.....

Agreed Lagopus ! I don`t know who the bids come from at Holts but they are at odds with everything that I see and hear from the Trade !!! I hope that we get the non tox ammo issues for fine guns addressed properly and their value is recognised by the younger shots ...but hope and reality are not the same sometimes.

I have an interest in British higher grade singles and own a few. They are rare as hen's teeth in the states with seemingly not much interest in them. The last Holt's auction seemed to be flush with them, with a lot not making reserve and languishing in the "get rid of 'em" followup auctions. I couldn't bid on them because the estimated import costs in total were generally higher than the value of some of the guns. They are ofen antiques in the US but not obsolete to the British, which causes a problem. It seems a whole class of interesting guns are being relegated to the junk heap over rules.

I won two rifles on the first day. Both under their high estimates. But I missed on all 7 of the boxlocks I bid on day two. The DH33 was tops on my list and I also bid that one up.

I have bid on numerous online auctions. Here, lately, the shotgun sold for the hammer price at my maximum bid or lower, and I did not win- they sold them to the on-site bidder. Both places tried to tell me that the auctioneer did not know who’s competing bid was first, but I called BS as my bid was 16 days prior to the auction. They were just too lazy to pack it up and mail it. I told both of them that I would never bid on any of their auctions again, and name them if anyone asked.

CJF, it might pay to make a trip to the U.K., while exchange rates are in your favor, and have a couple of weeks touring the Provincial gun shops and getting a Dealer to consign a bulk shipment. I would think you would do quite well at the moment. Lagopus.....

I love that idea but right now travel isn’t an option as we are helping two ailing parents. But sure would be fun.

I did OK in the sealed bid, won six guns and a bunch of parts.

Glad you had a bit of luck. Missed out on two O/U project guns. Both a bit of a basket cases for different reasons. So I might be better off. I did just put in a low bid on them knowing that they were going to take a lot of work or worse time to get right. Had they been a bit longer barrels I might have been much willing to bid higher. Short barrels just do not draw my attention these days. Missed also on two nice hammer guns as well. They went for several hundred more than I expected. Decent guns both and I hope they get a bit of use by their new owners. So I saved thousand on the last two auctions by winning zero things. At this rate I'll be rich someday.

My bid just over reserve matched the hammer price. Waiting for arrival or non-arrival of invoice to see if I have won or should have gone £1 more!

It is (I hope) a Telescope, Scout Regimental, as issued with the No.4 (T) rifle to Sniper Scouts.

Invoice arrived so it was my bid. Dang, I may have bid £3 too much!

When it arrives I will let you know if I identified it correctly.

It was as I thought and has arrived with its correct leather case and carrying strap, which they mentioned in the description but (perhaps luckily for me as the successful bidder) did not show in the catalogue photo.

The pre-war A. J. Parker stand used to retail for 10 shillings, but is nicely made with good quality materials.

What ya gonna do with it?

I was thinking groundhogs or the neighbor lady.

Will the image be erect with right/left not reversed? Gil

The Telescope, Scout Regiment like most “modern” telescopes has an Erector Cell (the Army probably calls it a “Cell, Erector”) in the middle so the image viewed is the right way up and the sides are not reversed.

If Patrick O’Brian, Dewey Lambdin and others have got it right (they are usually well researched) Naval “bring’em near night glasses” in the Napoleonic era showed the image inverted and reversed. Not user friendly but the elimination of the loss of light transmission caused by the 2 or more lenses in the erector cell must have helped when it was dark.