doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Serial Number Scramble

It's late and I'm going to ask a question that's been on my mind more than 20 years.

What is the reasoning behind "x-ing" out a serial number of a particular gun when said gun is mentioned in a publice venue, online or magazine, e.g. "The serial # of my bulcock is 247XXX"?

I can only imagine it's an imagined security provision, but how?why?

Never figured it out either,I have never had a problem posting serial numbers.
Maybe I'm missing something.

Maybe the triple X thing has to do with it being a bulcock .

Because most guys believe, with some justification, that the fertile criminal mind might conceive of ways to victimize people that we cannot yet see.

For instance, false or even true claims of theft in the chain of ownership...

Well.............OK, I guess. But it's not compelling enough to make me adopt its practice.

As an aside, there have been two instances in the past couple months or so where one member mentioned the entire serial # of his gun and another member pitched in that he had the very next one sequentially, or 5 - 7 digits away.

Comparisons of various features of the guns ensued, interesting differences/similarities, etc. Besides being interesting it's just basically a harmless "small world" kind of kick, entertaining in a quiet way. To me, at least.

"Mach Nicht" either way.

I cannot speak for everyone, but among collectors of pistols like Lugers, P.38s, and Mauser C96s the concern is disputes over ownership. There are literally millions of Lugers, but all military contract Luger have a four digit serial number. Put up a picture of a Luger showing its four digit serial number and there may be several people claiming the guns as one stolen from them; and they have receipts to prove it.

Life is messy enough without making it messier :-(

Kyrie, that's the point I tried to feebly make. There could be a situation where the gun was provably stolen--for instance, the theft was reported to the police. There are certain commercial transactions where title to stolen goods can be legitimately passed to the exclusion of claims by the rightful owner but the distinction is a commercial transaction by a seller who normally trades in the goods--Best Buy sells you a stolen TV. However, in some states this may or may not be the rule and it certainly doesn't apply to non-commercial private sales. In those situations you could lose the gun and good luck getting the money back from whom you bought it. It gets worse. In some states a buyer is put on notice that an item is stolen if the deal is substantially below what the object is worth--theft by receiving stolen property. That would only apply to the person who got the "too good to be true deal" and not buyers for reasonable value later. Even if you know the transaction you were involved in is legitmate and above board, why would anyone want to be subjected to possible false claims or even possible legitimate ones?

This discussion bring to mind the famous auction of Nash Buckingham's long lost "Bo-Whoop". Maybe time heals little irregularities like "finders-keepers".

I still wonder what if any accomodations were made to the Buckingham family by the seller or the auction company. If anyone knows the true story on this, I for one would love to hear it...Geo

Well then,Kyrie, that's a horse of a different color. I can certainly understand the need in that context.