I would like to get a consensus regarding present and future  value and the next generation's interest in Schuetzen single shots.  Looks like the younger generation is more interested in modern military firearms or something that will go " BOOM, BOOM ". Also, gun show attendance appears to be on the decline. What say ye ?

I would tend to agree with the declining prices based on a lack of interest and the cost for a young man or women to get into the sport of Schuetzen and or collecting. I think the attraction to the Black rifles is they can be had fairly cheap and the means to create what one wants without the aid of a gunsmith is extremly attractive.

JLouis

George Babits wrote on May 17^th, 2016 at 9:17pm:


/\ /\ /\     What he said.    Either that or it's because I've personally slowed down my acquisition on accounta I don't have an place to put any more.

George Babits wrote on May 17^th, 2016 at 9:17pm:


You might want to take a hard look at the collectable car and motorcycle market. Far bigger in every way and prices are higher in every desirable area.

I chalk it up to what I think of as the John Wayne vs. G.I. Joe divide.  As a Boomer, I grew up watching movies about WWII and the West - both of which were historical events to me - and playing "cowboys and indians" soldier or Dan'l Boone.  (Didn't mind playing an indian sometimes but no one would be a Nazi).

My interest in history, and historical firearms, comes largely from that entertainment, much like my appreciation for classical music has its roots in the Warner Brother's "Looney Tunes" cartoons that populated Saturday morning TV.

My son grew up after the vast majority of westerns had left TV and the movie theaters, and what he and his friends saw on television and at theaters was contemporary to their own lives: Mork & Mindy, the insipidity of The Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family.  All shows about current life.  Not exactly the kind of entertainment that instills a sense of one's own history or leads to an appreciation of and desire to own antiques (be they guns or furniture).

Toss in the following generation, who seem to think that anything more than a year or two old is ancient and who seem to live for the next i-Gadget release, and the market for antiques is dead.

You'd think the above would leave one completely depressed.  Being a student of history (like most of you, I suspect), I know that the guys who came back from the The Great War were largely done with lever actions and wanted bolt action rifles.  Following WWII they took a lot of nice old singe shots and "modernized" them into varmit rifles.

History runs in cycles and, as the children of the people who lived through and fought WWI & WWII,  we came along and re-discovered the original value of the old stuff.

Now we're getting old (or are already old) and that cycle is on the downswing.  But the value in the rifles we collect is only extrinsically in their history.  They also have an intrinsic value based on the quality workmanship that went into their creation and their usefulness as tools.  Those attributes will survive as long as the guns do and they will find new life when a new generation follows our journey of rediscovery.

Prices rise and fall with fashion having said that some of the reason for the declining prices is that all the shooting sports is experiencing declining numbers. Less people interested means declining prices law of supply and demand. 
I have always felt that single shots are something that you come to a little later in life. It requires a sense of history and a curiosity to see if you can stand up to shooters of the past. Younger shooters want to do everything fast and they haven’t acquired an appreciation of history. Those are things that will come a little later. Let them learn on ARs one day when they are in their 40’s somebody will wax then on the range with an old single shot and some will become curious.

40 Rod

I have been interested in guns all my life. I am 81 years old and I have seen interest in them change from one type to another many times. Like many of you I grew up with Hoppy, Gene & Roy as well as several other western heroes. I was fascinated with those Colts & Winchesters. In the early 1960s you could buy them far prices that you wouldn't believe if I printed them. The prices of those guns sky rocketed following the popularity of the many western shows on TV. They got another boost with the advent of cowboy action shooting. But recently I have seen their prices fail. It isn't difficult to figure out why. The men who loved those old guns, like me, all have white hair. Cowboy action shooting, like BPCS is on the decline and the younger guys like the black guns, as has been pointed out. The prices for either those class of guns will not come back. Remember a shooting sport called pistol silhouette shooting? Shooters were paying $1000 for pistols to compete with. I would not like to try to sell one of those pistols today. A good friend told me something over forty years ago. He was much older than me and had a huge collection of guns. He told me, " I have seen prices rise and fall on guns but you never know when or which gun it will be". Don't buy as an investment at this time. Who knows what the near future will bring. My two cents.

Fellows    Thank for everyone's input. The consensus appears to be what I thought---interest in these  works of craftsmanship is waning and values follow this. At my age I have often thought about what should happen to my collection if none of my 5 grandsons is interested. Maybe donated to a museum. These rifles have been a source of much enjoyment both in admiring and in collecting them, getting all the necessary shooting kits and literature back with each gun over a 50 year period. Let's hope the younger generation learns to respect and appreciate these guns for what they are---- a significant part of American firearms history .

There is not always any rhyme or reason to prices of collectables. Most of the guns I am looking for seem to be bringing more now than they did in the recent past. I've been looking for a nice Remington 581 bolt action .22 from the 1980's. I compare them to the 500 series bolt guns made from the '40's to the early '60's. Not as well made but good accurate sporters. The one I was watching last week on GB sold for over $500. Thought they were over priced at $300. Been trying to sell a nice antique wood phone booth for a while. They were bringing over $2000 several years ago. Can't get $1250 today . I've seen a couple of modified Stevens 417 Walnut Hill's sell for close to $1000 recently which is high in my opinion for a gun that is not original. I buy what I like. Sell guns occasionally to make room and get money for something different. Worst I have ever done is to get a little less than I paid. Usually make a little. Sometimes make a lot. You will never sell a gun and get nothing for it. I consider it an investment as well as a hobby but if my family has to sell at a loss when I am gone they will at least be a lot better off than if my hobby was golf or women.

LONG RANGE wrote on May 18^th, 2016 at 5:05pm:


If you've still got hair of any color, I'm envious. But truer words were never spoken, and any veteran dealer in collectable guns will confirm this sad fact--their "best customers" are now liquidating (or trying to), not buying. 

But while the men who loved old guns may have white hair (or none at all, like me), the men who once loved antique fishing tackle are apparently all, save for a few stragglers, DEAD, based on recent auction results; the bottom hasn't only fallen out, but a sink-hole has opened beneath the bottom.

I started going to Gun Shows in 1976, and quickly got interested in single shot rifles because they were classy looking.  Being a print junkie, I quickly accumulated all the books I could find about them.  About 1981, I found a few back issues of  American Single Shot Rifle News and joined up.

Back then, a starving student or beginner in the workplace, if he was persistent and did his research, could acquire single shot rifles in shootable, or at least rebuildable, condition.  I had a ceiling of $250, which I rarely exceeded, and this got me a goodly number of varmint rifle conversions, grey rats, refinished "originals," and other low end specimens of all major designs.  And parts for same.

Somewhere in the late 80's--early 90's the atmosphere started changing.  The shows run by the gun collectors' associations began to be edged out by show promoters, whose business was to sell tables, not show guns.  There were more and more of these extravaganzas scheduled, diluting the incidence of good stuff further.  The table holders, who formerly talked about guns, began increasingly to talk about money and investments, and, ultimately, about how dead the show was because they hadn't sold anything.  (A look at their prices would always show why, but out of politeness, I never pointed it out.)

I do see the tables with "Uppers" and "Lowers" and black rifles mobbed by the younger generation, but I see them look at the good old stuff too.  The sad fact is that they were priced out of all sane limits by a bunch of hustlers who were determined to retire in Florida on the proceeds from the used gun racket.  I'd frequently see a gun in "NRA Disgusting" condition at the same price a Price Guide listed for the same one in Mint condition.  Now the Internet auction sites fire the pecuniary hopes and dreams of these purveyors of "rare" and "vintage" firearms.

I really don't see this situation as a deplorable decline in investment value.  I see it as a bubble whose time to burst has long since passed. It dragged out a long time as inflation degraded the value of money, but hopefully it's ready to pop.  And afterwards, maybe some youngster with six months' savings in his pocket will see a beat-up old Highwall amid the Picatinny Railed table offerings, note that the price isn't insanely out of line with them, say, "Hey, this is kind of cool," buy it, and start the process again.

I agree totally with the advice given earlier about not donating any gun to a museum but I would extend that to not donating anything to a museum. My interest covers my things besides guns. I have a small collection of old telephones , bridals, bits and law enforcement badges although I have sold a large part of the collection a few years ago, too soon I might add. Several years ago my wife and I were in the Los Angeles County Museum. I was talking to a guard and I asked him about guns they have and why don't they display them? He said they had a huge collection of guns in the basement but would only display some if they were part of a larger theme such as life in early California. Some years later we were in a Los Olivos, California museum looking at tens of thousands of dollars worth of saddles and tack. The curator pointed out saddles that were worth over a 100k. I asked him if he ever got out from behind his desk and put any leather preservative on them? He looked daggers thru me. Leather is of course organic and will rot if not properly cared for but the truth is, they just don't care. A man who was in my crew at the phone company before we retired told me recently that he had donated his old phone collection to the San Bernardino County Museum. He was pleased with that until I told him I had been on E-Bay recently and some old Western Electric dials were selling for over $700. Not the phone, just the dial. As has been pointed old oak phones don't bring what they did in the 80s or 90s. The reason of course is that it is not what Grandma had. She had a Happy Days phone made in the 50s. I had an oak phone in my garage for several years and most younger people didn't even know what it was. I gave it to my daughter who has it in her kitchen just as a display piece. I can't stress this advice too strongly. If you have a nice gun collection and children who could care less about, sell them before you get too old and decide to check out. I have out lived many of the men I use to shoot with and I often tried to help the widow sell them and invariably a kid or uncle or some other person who didn't know jack about guns would swoop in and take charge. Disaster usually followed. Sell them before you go.

Hopefully your grandchidren will take a serious intrest but I can only see that happening if thier parents also do. It would trully be a blessing to be able to pass them on and I wish you the best.

JLouis

Ballard, I remember those scrap drives as well. Sadly I learned a few years ago that it was just a propaganda idea dreamed up by the government to get people involved in the war effort. I remember the huge pile of scrap metal piled up in front of the high school and how many old toys were in the pile. The toys were made of cast iron of unknown alloy and of no use to a steel mill but the government took all of it anyway. I watched a TV show a few ago in which they covered the rationing and the metal collection. They went on to say the metal was stored until the end of the war and then taken out to sea and dumped. One Saturday I was walking by the pile and couldn't resist a WWI Doughboy helmet, I grabbed it and ran. I kept it for several years but I have no idea were it got off to.