There is no BATF form for pre 1898 guns. Holt's can deal with the exporting as they have done it for me several times, for guns made in the 1870-1880's. They shipped them FedEx. It got hung up at my airport and to get it past customs I had to get a local custom agent to collect the import duties and pay a bond. The bond I expect was their payment in part. It was not terribly expensive but it did take time. With things opened up I might be able to deal directly with Customs, but during lock down you could not see them in person, for anything, which clogged up the entire process.
I think FedEx had a dollar limit what they would release without a customs agent and I recall it was under a thousand dollars. Unfortunately my gun had a declared value above their cutoff value. Still, I got my Westley Richards single-bite snap action bar-in-wood hammergun that had 2 3/4" chambers and nitro proof. A ready to shoot and have fun gun. Most of the bar-in-wood, crab joint guns, have lots of cracks or wood repairs but this one is perfect, for now.
If you have a question about Holt's I find a message to them gets a response, just look up shipping and send them an email. They can walk you through what they can do on their end and if they can not do it will give you a list of people who can do it. It sounds more complicated than it is but it will take time and a bit of money. You could also just use one of the importers here on the board and let them do all the leg work. Easier, but cost a bit more and will take longer as they batch ship things trying to keep the cost per gun down with volume batch discounting. Holt's used "Chordline Limited" to ship my gun by Federal Express freight directly to my airport FedEx office. I am looking at the invoice. FedEx got it at their location but had to hold it until Customs released it and for that to happen I had to pay a duty, tax. Now I would just use my agent or see if I could do it directly with Customs and then go to FedEx and pick everything up after it was released. I am going to be doing this again in a month if I get lucky on the next main sale at Holt's.
Last edited by KY Jon; 03/13/23 11:37 PM.
