"Wildcattle," et al., my recently imported antique firearm was valued for insurance purposes by several factors higher than the $2,500 figure you cite, but this is really beside the point because the monetary 'value' of an 'antique' anything has nothing whatever to do with formal or informal entry, etc. This inapplicable jargon serves to alert one to the high probability that someone or several someones erred. Provably antique anything imported, to include an "antique firearm" (i.e. "... any firearm manufactured in or before 1898" [emphasis added], or in other words is of pre-1899 manufacture), of course, is not taxed when their antique status can be demonstrated to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This is done by providing them a proof of age verification and your bill of sale, which should also indicate, in my opinion, the date of manufacture.
In pertinent part, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website states, "If the firearm is at least 100 years or more and you can provide proof of age, the firearm is eligible for duty-free treatment under the antique provision of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule." So the monetary value of your shipment was not a valid consideration, which again leads me to believe something else was involved. That something else must have been an error on someone's part and it was that which became the causal factor for the unwanted difficulties you describe.
Moreover, I am at a loss to understand what happened to your shipment other than to surmise that the exporter did not fully know what they were about and / or something was amiss with their paperwork or lack thereof, or perhaps the U.S. Customs agent was not informed on the subject of the importation of antique firearms. It is certainly likely, too, the customs broker also was not ably informed on the subject, which is more common than one would think. And that it was one or a combination of those elements that caused the supposed need for a customs broker to engage, which is an unneeded third party otherwise, in order to unravel the ensuing mess thereby created. Although, I would put my money on the exporter being the likeliest candidate at fault.
For example, in the recent past, I personally experienced an unnecessary two-week delay in the international shipment of a valuable antique firearm from England because the exporter (with decades of experience shipping firearms internationally) asserted, quite wrongly, that an extra set of post-1898 gun barrels, of a 2-barrel set, would require them to ship the antique firearm's stocked action body and original barrel set to me separately, and that I would need to file a Form 6 with the ATF with respect to the newer barrel set and receive ATF's blessing before they would ship that barrel set to me at additional cost. The exporter stubbornly maintained this baseless and untenable position.
When I disagreed vehemently with their inapt assessment, they answered by telephoning ATF in West Virginia from overseas in an attempt to prove their point, and not surprisingly were reportedly told by equally uninformed ATF staff that, yes, I needed to file their Form 6 for importation of the newer barrels and, by the way, we will require another to be filed for the antique firearm being imported as well. This conduct and interference was ridiculous at best because, as was earlier shown herein, ATF has absolutely no legal authority over any "antique firearm," whether the same is resident in the United States or being imported into it. However, doing something illegal has never prevented ATF from doing anything known to be, as we should all know, and that if you use 'incompetent' and 'bureaucrat' in the same sentence it is most often a redundancy. I see this amply demonstrated in federal courtrooms across our State on a weekly basis.
Yet this particular exporter held its ground; that is, until I provided them a written legal opinion on the subject, which irrefutably showed their position to be a perfect nonsense. So, we all have difficulties with incompetence or ignorance of the subject matter, from time-to-time, but this should not discourage us, and it might instead direct us to seek the assistance of truly knowledgeable people who do know how to accomplish what is actually a straightforward matter, leading to our ultimate goal. The goal here was to have the exporter ship my purchased antique firearm to me, which they eventually did, and with no further drama or delays.
Another example: Last year I bought an antique gunmaker's instrument at a U.K. auction and asked that it be shipped to me. When arrived at my doorstep and subsequently unwrapped, I simply did not notice that neither the box's labeling nor the waybill declared the item to be an antique. Some weeks later, I received an officious bill from U.S. Customs prompting me to pay the excise tax due or return the imported item to them forthwith. Instead, I researched the maker's company and proved in a writing to U.S. Customs that the item was in fact an antique. There ended the excise tax requirement. So people do make mistakes, though fortunately for us, not that often.
The so-called bottom line is that the export / import process, as I described above, works well as roughly stated, but only so long as the parties involved are fully informed about the processes and the individual part they need to play for it to be ultimately successful in actual operation. That said, I do not envy collectors or shooting sportsmen importing curio and relic or modern firearms into the United States. Theirs is a costly, time-consuming and problematic process altogether different in every respect from that concerning the antique firearm, which latter classification is wholly unregulated.
I wish all who want to import antique firearms for their collection or sporting purposes much encouragement and the best of luck for your efforts.
Regards,
Edwardian
