doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com want a good laugh?

Have to be a mite careful also with those who talk the talk. There's an S&W specialist (overgrown pawn shop!) on the web who will measure every aspect of a copshop tradein. They'll tell you the B/C gap is .005 in the first para and .009 in the next. The top strap can be half torched thru and they'll tell you gas-cutting is at an acceptable level. They'll tell you (in degrees of arc) that the cylinder locks up before letoff. I should hope so! There are better deals to be had from folks who know even less than you or I.

jack

I would have to agree, during the 50 or so years of buying firearms, some of my best deals have been from experts. Many gunshop owners don't do their homework, they make a few bucks and are happy.

Jim

I have taken a few chances with new sellers on the internet auctions. Some of them are decent people who do not know what information we need or want. A few are trying to pull a fast one. Most of the later are easy to catch. They always play too dumb with just enough information that lets you know they are being cute. Bad pictures, from a person in the business, are joke. They either need to learn how to take better ones or get off the net.

I bought a Lefever Nitro Special A Field grade 12 last year that was pristine. The pictures were so bad that you could only identify by shape and color that it might have been in good shape. While I do not need a Nitro Special it is the best I have seen in the last 20 years and it cost me less than $200.00 delivered. It looks unfired and in fact I bet it is or as close to unfired as any gun can be. No primer or shell abrasions on the breech face. Not a nick in the stock. So sometimes a bad picture favors the well informed or the lucky, like myself, (lucky that is).

I bought an excellent early 3-screw Blackhawk at a bargain price because the seller had other pre-occupations more pressing than putting a premium on marks of collector desirability. You could just about see the three action screws in the pix. No other bids. It is a joy with 3.5 gr. of SR 7625 and 148gr. HBWC. The Herrett grips (90 bucks a la carte) didn't hurt much either. Bought an early Dan Wesson 15-2 local shop yesterday evening about 150 dollars under internet asking. It looked as filthy as it was and the cylinder lock DA was depressingly late. Now it looks great (no rust spots) and the cylinder lock snaps up energetically. Amazing what a bit of carb cleaner and compressed air can do.

jack

it's what you get when someone doesn't know anything about guns other than what he gets - and in this case misunderstands - out of the blue book.

it can go either way: either they have some lower end item (often klunker) they're convinced is priceless or they have something very good misidentified and underpriced. in my experience you most often encounter the former.

KYJ - Why did you buy a gun which was advertised with bad picures? From some other postings, you seem to be very particular about internet picture quality, but took a chance on something unrecognizable. Any advise you can share would be helpful, I need to sell a couple of SxSs - expenses building up.

speakin of a good laugh bid on a gun on gun brokers from Ed finally told him that if he switch to mapp gas it would be faster than propane what an ass____.

NJdblgun

Some of the bad photos are deliberate some are not. If the seller has several guns listed and the one you are interested in is the worst set of photos of the bunch you better be careful. Some sellers are honest people who can not operate a camera well and take and post pictures as best they can. I email the seller and make sure that I have the three day return grace period, get as much additional information as possible and decide if the risk is small or great. I may loose shipping cost if returned, but most of the times I bid so low that even if the gun is a parts gun I am OK and can keep it. Bid $150.00 on a Nitro Special and the barrels are worth that much alone. You do not drop a grand into a gun with bad pictures.

If a seller has sold 10 plus guns and post lousy pictures that should be a warning bell. If the seller has sold one or two guns it is not as great a warning bell. Many of these sellers are just trying to sell a few guns that they inherited and have no real idea of what they have and are happy to get out any money out of them that they can.

There are three fairly frequent "composition with gun" fotos which are giveaways. Anorexic, bucktoothed female holding gun; gun on snooker or pool table (particularly if torn cover is in evidence and possibly also flat black wall "treatment"; gun with pajama bottoms and house slippers uncropped (guy has a chair on which he perches quite capably but apparently gets out of bed for little else). There's one guy on AA or GB who I swear uses a soft focus filter to record his high dollar junk recumbent on a bed of what appears to be zebra hide. And how about the seller who takes snaps of his product on his pasteboard computer desk with keybd. always present in shot (a dyed-in-the-wool internet merchant). Call me conventional but I really don't care to witness the tertiary stages of personality disintegraton and I prefer the seller to keep his dog, kid, fat nephew, and schedule for receipt of new kidney out of the shot. Porches or decks with snow and Cardinal are OK if there's enuf sun to make the gun visible.

jack

Tried him once. Gun condition was about 40% less than advertised. After some heated discussion, he took it back.