doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Holts Auction London, Today

From my experience Holt's has been pretty good at responding to E-mails and answering questions before a sale and also sending additional pictures. I have also called them numerous times and they have been helpful over the phone.

I try to ask what questions I have plenty of advance of the sale so I know they have the time to address my questions.

The items I have bought from them have shown up as advertised.

I have them looked over first.

I'm with Tony on this; I have made almost all of the Holts viewings in the past 3 yrs barring this months, and have learnt a ton from holding and inspecting guns - but would always leave a detailed review to the professionals! As an aside, some of the prices for quality catridge magazines/cases have been exceeding guide prices by some measure - I bid �300 on a lovely 500 leather/oak/brass cartridge magazine earlier in the year which went for double!

Incidentally, there was a 32inch Tolley hammerless 8 bore which went for �8k and looked a very good price given recent big bore sales.

Well, sorry to piss on this fire. Turns out my WR was 15 thou in the pits. No mention of this in the description. It's totally my fault for not measuring. But I pretend to blame it on my illness and my desperation to get something at the auction. My friends at Lovels phoned Nick Holt for me...who surprisingly said "well we are just the auctioneers".

I'm really sad about this. I buy from them in a belief that they are honest about the thickness and proof of guns they sell. I've bought buckets of guns from them. But for a �750 gun they kick me in the face...blue from a tumour removed recently.. (ok just being dramatic). But it really hurt. Anyway I'll phone Nick Holt tomorrow myself and report back here what the answer was.

I don't mind really. I like the gun and will probably fire the gun even though it's 15 thouh near the muzzle. But I didn't realy expect there to be no comment from them. EVERY other gun in their description tells me if something is below recommended minimum thickness and for them to pull this fast one has really made me think about EVER buying from them again...even in my expected short life-time!

Cheers
T

You haven't been screwed until fucked by an English auction house. Is that how it goes? Thought so.

You not been screwed until a dealer says "mint original chambers, bores, 30 thou walls" and find out they are lengthened and 18 thou min...........LOL. Happens all the time

Well I have played the game both ways some guns I have paid for evaluations and some I just take a chance. Not real smart but you pay your money and take your chances. On guns I expect to go over 1000 pounds I have paid someone over there to evaluate the gun for me and act as my agent if I decide to bid. Most do not get a bid from me after the evaluation. In person evaluation is without a doubt the way to go if you can do it. Other trained eyes will always find more than my eyes will find. Even more so when you get gun lust and just fall in love with a gun.

A few guns that I thought would bring less than 500 pounds I either bid blind or just placed a bid and hoped. Total purchase to date is three in this group. One ended up being a major project case and was not one of my better buys. Heck it cost more to get it here, to find out it was a mistake, that it cost to buy. Shipping multiple guns, to decrease the per gun cost, is the only way to go.

In the guns I paid for evaluation one ended up being a mistake. One real mistake and that was a repaired stock done long ago which cracked when it was being bent. Not a error in the eval as much as a perfect repair five of us missed and then it failed. It has been repaired again and only hurts when I look at it.

I have used Dig and find his evaluations to be top notch. In fact his advice saved me from one major mistake that would have cost several time the guns real value before I was done. Sometimes a 120 year old gun is the worlds worst money pit. Fox one thing and then find two or three others more to fix.

You should not get on poor old Holts for sticking it to you. I got it from almost every auction company in the US. If I described guns like they do and happend to " miss" informing customers about things, I would not be in business for 37 years

One of the major auction houses sent me a letter saying that they were just a conduit for selling other peoples guns that is all. Of course they lists all their great " specialists" in the front of the catalog.



John Boyd
Quality Arms

Nick told me the same thing on a �3500 Purdey that had a cracked forend iron that wasn't mentioned or shown in the photos.

Don't forget the difference between a gun auction house and a rat is there are certain things that a rat will not do.

I agreed a purchase with Holt's gun room manager this week and the day after Nick Holt's PA sent me an email and welshed on the deal.

That's why they are called in the UK trade " Tricky Nicky's"