doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Vintagers day - UK

If any of you are in the UK on June 11th and are at a loose end you will be very welcome to come along to our bi-annual Vintagers day incorporating the Perrins Owners Club meet. It will be held at South Worcester Shooting Ground - www.swsg.co.uk for directions. Drop me a line via the Perrins web site http://info71508.wix.com/perrinsgunmaker if you want more details.
John

Is this the Perrins folk who made the Worcestershire sauce. Shall I bring some Grey Poop-on?? Ta Ta!!

Forget the stories about the chemist shop next door to the gun shop making up a sauce brew which was inedible until it was accidentally stored in the cellar for 6 months. I think they were working on a new formula for browning barrels and decided to taste it. Only joking!!
59 Broad Street Worcester was next door to the Chemist shop where the sauce was discovered. Although the founders of the two businesses were only born 8 years apart and 12 miles between them we haven't as yet found a direct connection.
I suppose the barrel colouration is somewhat similar!! Maybe we should get the sauce owners to sponsor the web site?
John

Always enjoyed reading the Perrins website which cropped up when reading up on 14 bore cartridge guns its a fantastic resource and its great to see people so enthusiastic about this maker.The site looks to have had a face lift since i last visited.

I'm notoriously unreliable for coming out of the workshop and traveling about the country, however my grandparents live near Ludlow so i could combine it with a visit to them else wise its 3 1/2 hours on the roads each way. Sadly no Perrins in the collection!

It is very strange to hear �Vintages� here in Brit land, the idea has somehow never taken off and I just can�t understand why! If it is vintage guns that could create an interest in the public mind for shooting this country has one or two of them stuffed at the back in practically every gun owner�s cabinet.
If my memory serves one Brit member of this board �Salopian� did put great efforts into trying to start a vintages club, but somehow the interest did not seem to be there. I suppose one day it may happen here and I do hope I am alive to go to the first meeting to see what unseen items of great rarity appear in the light of day.
Just to get things in proportion a person once said at a shoot it would be a great idea to have a London gun owners club until someone piped up �and there would be a couple of unsavoury characters noting down car registration numbers in the car park� That in reality how easy it is to find a house address from a car registration number here and burglary would be the next happening in your life.

It used to be easy to find the name and address of a car tag owner here in the U.S. until some high profile crimes occurred as a result. Probably be a good idea to steal and use someone else's tag if you wanted to avoid theft of guns. Gil

I suppose it easy for anyone to note down car reg at any clay shoot throughout the country on any day of the year - why would anyone specifically target 100 year old gun owners in preference to new guns?
This will be the 4th meet and each time it has grown in popularity. At the last one we had some rare and fascinating guns. As well as the ones you would expect i.e. flint, percussion and c/f cartridge guns we had tube locks, pill locks, pin fire and needle fire. Have a look at http://info71508.wix.com/perrinsgunmaker#!perrins-owners-club-meets/ctba and click on the 2014 link where you will find a collection of photos.
Jophn

All fascinating stuff Farmer but can you give me the Web addresses of �The Purdey owners Club� or the �Holland and Holland owners club� or may be the �Boss� etc. Not the type of thing done when you have a pair of guns in one leather case easily transported costing new upwards of a hundred thousand pounds. If you look at the post again you will see the suggestion was a �London Gun owners club� and finally some hundred year old plus guns made by London makers can be worth a fortune compared with guns built say twenty years ago. Someone somewhere own the pair of guns belonging to Winston S Churchill just to name one famous person, now put a value on them if they ever came up for sale they may have even belonged to his farther Randolph which puts them in the one hundred year category, you cannot make blanket statements about guns and value.

My apologies - I thought you were thinking along the lines of bad people out there wanting to acquire guns for criminal purposes after the news item this evening saying that obsolete calibre and vintage guns were increasingly being used in armed crime. Apparently a French cavalry officers pistol was used to try and shoot down the police helicopter - so they want the legislation on owning old guns legally tightened up. I thought that there was quite severe penalties already for using guns for illegal purposes so wouldn't it be better to use the available man power to catch the criminals rather than policing more licencing for the law abiding. Certainly security is high on the list of considerations at all time but because shotguns are licenced here I would have thought a stolen Purdey, H&H or Boss would plummet in value if stolen as anyone buying it wouldn't be able to use it or show it off - which as far as I am concerned is the reason they have such elevated values. I am not sure if there are owners clubs for the London guns but perhaps there isn't a demand as the manufacturers have the records and maybe the owners don't want to meet up in order to see other old guns and chat to like minded people. Researching the Perrins family work has been a fascinating piece of living history which has only been possible since the advent of the internet. To be honest it serves no useful purpose and these meets serve no useful purpose. People give there time and support the day and only people who are interested come along so I suppose it enriches their lives - so that is the purpose. Long may it be so. John

I do think all the facts about high value big boys toys are not clear, a lot are stolen to order or for a particular buyer such as high value Ferrari�s and Lamborghini�s, locked up in containers and shipped to countries who do not take an interest in provenance and ownership. The same goes for high value guns and of course paintings not all are sold at rock bottom prices otherwise the risk and return would not equate. I know of three individuals who have had London guns go missing while being transported and one pair some 20 years ago now, they have never surfaced. Where there�s a want and money there is a market, as for the rest we will have to agree to differ.