Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Herb Houze
community.
In many instances the collector might find it practical and advantageous to use a reliable agent when buying at auction; either because his own expertise is weak or he is unable to personally view or attend the auction. Bidding agents usually charge a fee (10 percent seems about average) with such fees scaled downward if values reach five figures or more. It is a widely held opinion that the fee should be earned; to do so, the agent must be held responsible for more than merely bidding. While representing the collector, the agent should be answerable and held accountable for the authenticity of the item to be auctioned. Any doubts that he might have as to its originality should immediately be made known to the customer, at which time the responsibility then passes to the customer. When a bidder does not personally attend an auction, placing bids by mail or telephone with an auction house, without the use of a personal representative, it is possible that their bid may be used against them. Although telephone or mail bids should be used with the greatest of confidentiality, and it is assumed that a reputable house will do so, there have been enough unethical abuses of absentee bidding to create apprehension on the part of some bidders. Reputations of the auction house or the auction agent will certainly precede them. Above all ... never bid on anything unless you have personally examined it ... or had a trusted representative examine it ... or have an ironclad money back guarantee from the auction house that it may be returned if found not as described.
TRENDS IN COLLECTING
Undoubtedly the most significant trend in arms collecting is the constant search for weapons in pristine or close to “factory new” or “mint” condition. The most noticeable difference between the old-time American collections (those formed before 1950 and especially prior to World War II) and those of the postwar period is the overall condition of the latter group. In the earlier days, when guns were plentiful and quite inexpensive, very little concerted effort was made to seek only the finest or “ultimate” specimens. At the same time price differences for varying states of condition had a much smaller spread than in the current era. In articles dating from those earlier periods of collecting, condition is prominently mentioned as a desirable goal, but collectors then seldom sought the “ultimate” and quite often were satisfied with just reasonably clean specimens or those in a “fine” state and no more. The progression and advancement of the hobby, the spread of available knowledge and the great influx of new collectors have caused the search for perfection to become much more pronounced, to the point where among many this has achieved an almost fetish stage. Obviously the proportion of arms of any type in the “excellent” or “factory new” state is quite small in relation to overall quantities available; thus, the greatest price spreads will be found between average condition pieces and those in the top grades.
Another noticeable trend has been the increasing specialization to quite limited, confined fields. Much of this can be attributed to the wealth of data published in both book and periodical form, allowing the aficionados access to a guide for building their own collections. Without the availability of such material, it is extremely difficult to specialize in many areas, and the collector must have a bit of pioneering instinct to do so. The easy availability of arms literature and the steady stream of new research studies have in themselves spawned a host of subgroups and sub-studies which in turn have identified other variations and types of arms that were heretofore unrecognized or completely overlooked. This is especially evident in some of the less expensive categories (the Damascus barrel breech-loading shotguns are an example); pieces which formerly were rarely collected or at best had severely limited followings. These types have generally achieved a much elevated status in recent years, with demand continuing to increase. A number of specialties have yet to be researched and documented, and remain as yet unexplored.
A dramatic change in collecting is the wholesale mobility of the collector himself due to the fantastic network of interstate highways built in the postwar years as well as the easy availability of air travel. Such advantages now taken for granted certainly serve to increase the collector’s propensity to travel to all ends of the country in pursuing his hobby.
The increasing importance of antique arms well restored is a noteworthy development in the most recent years. The subject in general will be covered in Chapter III, but it is worthy of mention here as a decided trend in the collecting world. With the diminishing supply of fine specimens, combined with an increasing demand for those available, collectors have accepted restored arms on a wider basis than formerly. The subject is one sure to stir considerable debate and involves the matter of ethics; our purpose here is merely to report on what is occurring in the field rather than involve ourselves in dialectics.
Foremost among restorations is the reconstruction of flintlock arms; mainly in restoring to flintlock pieces that were earlier converted to percussion. At one time this practice was very much frowned upon, and even derided, by the majority of collectors. Feeling has mellowed considerably over the years and as long as there exists no intent to deceive the buyer into believing the specimen is in its original flintlock state, such restorations are not only acceptable, but are sometimes desirable. Of course, the work should be competently and accurately done. Certain other previously frowned upon restorations have become generally acceptable in recent years; these are usually on the earlier pieces of the muzzle-loading variety.
A very noticeable improvement in the postwar years has been clearly evident in the matter of arms descriptions. With the steady parade of value increases as well as the frequency with which specimens are advertised and sold through collector magazine mail order advertisements, the descriptive qualities of the advertisers have generally improved over earlier cataloging days. With no little sense of pride, the author feels that he has played an instrumental role in helping transform the general quality of the jargon of the collector and setting a pattern for the details necessary to provide a complete verbal description for mail order sales. In days when guns were inexpensive, a few words of description would often suffice for each item. With the great increase in values, every defect or fine point plays an important role in pricing; thus, to competently describe a gun, it should be reduced to a description of condition for each of the various components. A quick sampling of dealer catalogs of earlier days and those that exist now will poignantly illustrate this trend.
THE ANTIQUE ARMS PRESS
Among the more interesting means to get a handle on collecting trends is to survey the history and background of the various periodicals devoted to antique arms that have come and gone over the years. I recently had the opportunity to do just that while preparing an article for the 50th anniversary of The Gun Report, the longest-running journal devoted exclusively to arms collecting and antique firearms. The retrospective proved to be a fascinating exercise. Should the aspiring scholar find the initiative to chart and graph all those many antique arms and their values over the decades, they would reflect not merely obvious value fluctuations (invariably substantial increases) but, more importantly, the changeable patterns of collecting that occurred.
Although all of the various journals and periodicals that preceded The Gun Report (and its contemporary Man at Arms) were short-lived, each in its own way was an important milestone in the collecting of antique firearms in America. The most probable cause of their individual failures was the lack of financial support by what was then but a small nucleus of dedicated antique arms collectors. In an article on this very same subject by the noted collector Henry M. Stewart in the November, 1974 issue of the Monthly Bugle (journal of the Pennsylvania Antique Gun Collectors Association), his research revealed that the earliest article in a national magazine dealing with antique gun collecting appeared in Outing Magazine in 1902 under the title “Collectors and Collections of Pistols.” That was followed by a second article in 1903 in that same publication, “Pistols with Pedigrees.” Likely the first American periodical solely devoted to the subject was the Magazine of Antique Firearms. Its first edition of 22 pages appeared in April, 1911 followed with consecutive issues monthly through August 1912. Published in Athens, Tennessee, its masthead declared it: “Official Organ of the American Society of Antique Weapon Collectors.” Now approaching a century in age, those issues contained many excellent articles and illustrations and still make interesting reading.
With its introductory issue of March, 1923 Stock and Steel, billed as the “Official Organ