And then there is the Italian service rifle I saw advertised with "traces of original grease"

Imagine all those battles lost in North Africa and it kept the origional grease.  I put in a bid but not sucessfull.  Darn !

Boats

I am certainly aware that telling someone a bore is crappy means different things to different people and was only used to demonstate my frustration with non descript terms. Assigning a number to bore condition is certainly more then  acceptable if it is followed by descripters. I do think that a number system is the way to go if it tied to various descriptors that clearly illustrate the bores condition.The big thing is to make the grading of bores at least as good as the NRA or Blue Book illustrations for external evaluation.  It isw certainly not perfect but better then the often convoluted descriptions you see now or the exact opposite where the seller tells you nothing .

I think people are always going to have different ideas of what is good too excellent/ Poor etc.
If you can't see it yourself before you buy, I'd say make sure there is at Least a 3 day return policy, so that if it isn't what you had expected, you can return it for a refund. 

Terry

Last year I went to look at an 1876 Win. in 40-60 that was being sold by one of the locals that does the gun show thing. He told me the bore was bright and shiny and the gun shoots great. When I looked down the bore it was indeed very bright and shiny and there was no trace that it ever had any rifling. Almost like it had been reamed out for a shotgun and I asked again about how good it shot and got the same answer, shoots great. I had to pass on it. I have tried to make other deals with this same person and found that his guns must have gold in them someplace to establish the high value he puts on them.