I agree with your friend I don't like Bolo, 345K originally made there are still plenty of them around, and I don't like Red 9 only because here they get re-chambered 9x21 IMI so to me they lose all their collector value


Best,


Sergio

I don't know the situation in Italy. But here in the US market, most Bolos were imported from China. After passing many hands in China, they were almost universally in poor shape. In the history, US also imported quite a few Bolos. Of course, those "US Bolos" are mostly in nice shape, even in late 1970s and early 1980s, there were still new-old-stock Bolos for sale at dealerships, and there was collector bought a dozen of them as investment. Unfortunately, attaching stock to C96 was still illegal at that time, so those nice Bolos had no stock. Only Bolos sold before 1934 GCA falling into private owners' hands could have matching stocks ... if not destroyed later.

Nice original Bolo with matching stock could easily sell $5k to $8k in the US nowadays. I got three of them, sold one recently. I will keep two others. Not for sale in short term anymore -- due to they are not easy to come in the US. Ralph M. sold 80+ broomhandles, he did not have a single postwar Bolo with matching stock... if I remembered right, there is none in Sturgess collection either (or, at most one, I cannot remember). Joe S. collection was filtered before auction,,, after filtering, there was no Bolo with matching stock either.