doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Auction prices.

It never ceases to amaze me what prices some people pay in auctions. here is a recent example.



Sold on EBay for $1,100.00, 30" Remington SP 10 barrel in good but used condition. I have seen several sell on EBay for $450-550.00. But this one went crazy.

A complete guns just sold on GunBroker for$1125.00 and it had both the regular barrel, a slug barrel and scope. If I was the seller I wold be a very happy person. If I was the buyer and found out that I just paid more for a single barrel than an entire gun cold be bought for then I might be a little mad at myself.

I've been looking for some guns at auctions lately and everything is just going sky high.

I have noticed the same thing in the UK auctions i have been bidding in.

This 26" barreled, 20 ga. Sterlingworth, extractor gun, recently sold on GB for $2430. With shipping and 7% tax it becomes $2643. I was made aware of it through a post by a friend on another forum. These prices are going crazy. It may be getting time to unload a few that I never shoot anymore.

Amazing what the small bore Fox Sterlys are bringing these days, while they can't give away the 12 bores.

That said, it only takes 2 to do the Tango. If two are bidding and both really want something bad enough bidding can pass real value pretty quick. That said who knows what real value is these days. I will be paying close attention moving forward.

I would be curious to see if the seller actually got paid. I just had a high bidder on a watch bid up the auction at the last minute, and then refuse to complete the transaction after winning.

It just takes two people wanting the same thing

On items like this I keep checking to see if it gets resisted. Sometimes it is a non paying bidder, sometimes a bidder who demands a full refund for some real or imagined reason and sometimes it is a shill bidder. When every I see the second bidder has a very low number of feedbacks or worse none at all I approach with caution. Don’t let a shill bidder run the price up. Set your limits and walk away above that. There will always be another one along soon enough.

On a positive note, inflation makes your trade-ins worth a lot...Geo

I was the other bidder on that gun. This newly registered buyer with no rating showed up with about 4 hours left and started bidding. We were the only two bidding and he drove me up from $1700 to $2400, and I quit.

Several years ago, I bought a late production Savage Sterlingworth 16 at Jaquas which had the original Hardware Store hangtag and literally looked unfired. It also had an amazing stock (probably a leftover inventory piece) which Walt Snyder said in a post was the nicest stock he had ever seen on a Sterlingworth. Being an idiot, I sold it a few years ago. Lately I have been trying to accumulate a set of working grade classic double smallbores in nice original shape. The Stirlingworth is being a problem. I only bid as much as I did on this one since I had lost out on a much nicer one about an hour before that was really correct and finally pushed almost $3000. This gun was the fallback, and I lost it too.

The smallbores are really escalating. I know because I have been trying to buy several recently.

I understand the auction issues. I needed a New model Ruger Red Label 20 gauge for my collection. Problem is they only made 250 in total so I ended up having someone bid up one I found until I paid about a grand more than I wanted to pay. I just did it because they are none to be bought and in the end it was the going rate. I bought a like new in the box Red Label 30" gun for what I thought was too much only to watch two much more used and abused guns sell for a grand more each in the next week. People have money and will run up prices. I just need to walk away at some point because a few of these prices are just stupid. Like a barrel that is well used selling for almost as much as a much better looking compete gun. Good luck in your small bore hunt. I looked a long time before i found a 16 & 20 Sterlingworth with 30" barrels. Must have come across 500 20's with 26" barrels, 100 with 28" barrels and five 30" barreled guns. First one that was decent and not priced like it was solid gold came home with me.

Non-paying bidders are getting worse on Ebay and horrible on Gunbroker. One guy on Gunbroker actually told me "walmart takes returns. it's how things are, get used to it." Well, auctions aren't Walmart. Auction bids are contracts. And, it's not always people with NR or few feedbacks, at least on gunbroker. I've got one right now I'm sure I'll have to relist and this guy has several hundred feedbacks, virtually all A+'s but five for non-payment. Been a week and no response.

And Gunbroker is such a pain to get a listing fee credit, takes about a month for their process, and I don't think even then I've ever been reimbursed so I just relist and chalk it up as a loss.

The real problem is the number of people who think this is a perfectly fine way to behave.

Roger