Fired MANY times
 

I recently inherited a Smith and Wesson Model 1066 10 MM after my father passed in July. I listed the gun recently on Gunbroker. I was contacted by a self-proclaimed retired federal agent that stated he was a gun expert. I listed the gun as new and unfired. My father never fired any of his weapons that he collected nor have I. He asked me to change my auction to state that the gun had been fired many many times. He based his opinion on a picture that was in my photobucket account but was not on the auction. I would like to see if there are any "experts" here that can determine if this gun was fired many many times. Lol

He stated that he owned guns that were fired over 500 times and still looks brand new. He stopped just short of accusing me of lying in my auction by stating it had not been fired. I replied that it could have been test fired from the factory which most manufacturers do. Here is the picture in question.

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/b...psibacfpax.jpg


Here is another picture I took after wiping the area with my finger.

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/b...psgkygqojj.jpg

Joe

Sorry, maybe I've not really understood your point.

FWIK the S&W 1066 10 mm caliber is a nice gun and not so easy to find, I also know that it's a strong and reliable firearm.
Perhaps a direct inspection from a so called "gun expert" is more reliable, BUT from the two pictures you posted the gun seems brand new and probably unfired.
My 2 cents.

Best


Sergio

The wearing should appear first on barrel front and rear area due to scratches created by slide movement. Check barrel and inside of the slide should tell.

From GB pictures, it has been fired -- new gun's bolt front does not have black circle, but not been fired a lot, much fewer than 500 IMO, due to the barrel section exposed in ejection window is like new. But the gun is in your hand, you can check more. Many people don't fire their guns, but could not hold their curiosity pulling slide open many times, that would leave light scratches on above mentioned areas too.

The auction was not up for even 12 hours when the exchange between me and said expert. Not sure if he just wanted to get me to change description to "used" or have me remove "unfired" from the description. Him going into the whole fired many times and he stressed ALOT, confused me. There is little or no wear anywhere...besides the obvious racking of the slide as mentioned above. How he could use his so called expertise to determine heavy round count is beyond me.

Here is a link to the auction so you can see the description and pictures.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/Vie...Item=507335327

If posting the auction is not allowed, I understand. It is just for reference.

God knows. Probably he's interested in the item and want to suppress the price down a little bit. Or, he's a purist, cannot watch an item for sale that he thought being misrepresented.... God knows.

It really surprises me that modern S&W pistol could be this high though. This is not C&R.... I know there are many people collecting non-C&R guns, looks like the cost is not low in that domain either... and people collect these guns not firing a single round,,,, more and more newly made guns joining this group, it can only go cheaper and cheaper, right? But who knows, I did see NIB Norinco T54 (non-C&R) sold $1800 on gunbroker.com a few weeks ago. New S&W should have potential too.

Perhaps your 'expert' plans on listing one himself, and doesn't want your price driving his auction. The 10mm S&W is somewhat rare, and recent magazine articles have stimulated interest in the 10mm chambering.

Some of my handguns (that I do fire) have been scrubbed clean after a range session. It is beyond my skill to tell 500 rds wear from 5 rds...But I am not an 'expert' like your 'friend'.

Maybe he thinks it is a 'retired' handgun (agency lets officer take his service arm with him when he retires). My local town justice has his old S&W .357 revolver mounted above his desk, on a plaque, with a suitable inscription on a brass plate. If it was carried, then he qualified with it regularly (or practiced) and it would therefore be fired 'many many times'. Perhaps your 'expert' thinks this is what happened with your fathers pistol.

When I was with AFRES, I cleaned 50+ S&W revolvers twice a year, for inspection. Some were carried by the DOD Police, some had never been issued (the depot supply documents accompanied them). It is possible to have an old handgun that was stored and never issued or fired after acceptance.

I think GB has a policy of notifying the site admins about private offers [outside the auction] or other harassing emails/PMs. I would send/forward them a copy of the email/PM, let them decide how to handle his demand.

For a newer gun, how much difference in price from fired at the factory only to fired 'many' times?

if brand new looking then i think most folks could care less.

I was selling some WW2 made Luger ammo last fall and had pictures of the original box. The words on the box are interpreted by many that its for machinepistols. In reality it means it is primarily FOR submachine guns (steel case) and it does not mean its unsafe. This IDIOT wrote me that i was trying to sell something unsafe.

I at first was very irritated, but simply changed my ad to state these are for collectable use and should probably not be fired. My point is, you can barely change your wording and have the same effect. You can say, appears unfired, dad never shot it and he bought it straight from the local gun store.

And then block them from bidding :) I am amazed at how many folks think they are auction police

- although I have written folks telling them if I saw something wrong, just trying to be helpful, but perhaps it was not taken that way?

Ed

I can see the same picture and conclude that the gun has been fired, and many times- though I have no idea how many.

The slide cartridge face area is the "tell".

That aside, I would never describe a gun as "un-fired", for a couple reasons-
1- you can never prove it
2- it really makes no difference
3- all guns have likely been fired at least once!

I'd use the description wording similar to what Ed says in his post above.
That puts back into the realm of "what you know".

Yeah, I get the whole idea that it may have been fired and should not have been listed as new. I appreciate all of your input guys. If it does not sell, I will revise the main listing. If I keep adding to the description now, it is gonna look all cluttered.

Here is some of the dialogue from my exchange last night.

"I am a retired Federal agent for the*

Department Of Defense,,, I can tell*

How many times any gun has been fired*

By the powder residue/burn marks left*

On the face of the breech,, and also

By Mt professional expertise with firearms*

In general,,, the gun that you are auctioning*

Has clearly been fired many times outside

Of the factory firing,,, I have a slew of firearms in my safe that look like new even fired over 500 times. *I am a professional*

In the firearms field,, Good Luck selling a

Used Firearm,,, and if you were an honest individual you will post that photo in your listing in adittion to photos of both sides of the barrel. *I have noting further to comment on. *"

Joe,

Apart from the fact that "from the breech face" nobody can really tell for sure if a gun has been fired 5 times by the maker or 250 times by the first owner, period.
Dealing with people has never been easy, recently I think it's getting worse as people seem to get more and more difficult; anyway I think Edward has probably told you how properly "phrase" your ad. Good luck.

Best


Sergio

There are many self proclaimed experts out there, and that's why I hate selling on Gunbroker. I had a gun for sale a while back, and a guy bid on it and won. This gun is in pristine condition and looks like it has only been test fired, but I know that the term "unfired" could spark a debate so I took a lot of detail pictures and described the signs of use instead. The day after the auction closed, I got a phone call from the buyer. He said that he had looked closer at the pictures and found that the gun could be a reblue, and the box must be a reproduction. It guess he thought that the gun was too nice to be all original and got cold feet. I didn't want to argue with him, so I simply cancelled the transaction.

This forum and the P.38 forum are really the only places where you don't find those quasi-experts. If you go to, for example, the Colt forum, you really have to filter everything you read, some members seem to absorb every piece of information they can possibly pick up and then pass it on as the truth. It's kinda funny sometimes when you read a thread about gunsmithing where some people say that a particular repair or adjustment is "impossible", and you know that you did that actual repair yesterday.

One of the stranger ones was when one guy stated that the sight beads on Colt revolvers are tapered and need to be fitted to the tapered slot in the barrel. I guess he had come across a sloppily cut sight slot (which is not too uncommon), and thought that it was tapered on purpose. I wouldn't be surprised to see this being repeated in future threads, until it eventually is accepted as "the truth". :banghead:

Anyway, if you want some good entertainment you can search the Colt forum for "unfired". Among other interesting tidbits you'll find that Colt revolvers were always test fired in the white, then disassembled, finished and reassembled to make sure there were no signs of the gun ever being fired. I wouldn't doubt that some of the custom guns were done that way, but doing it in production... ? :eek:

No reason to get upset. If you like, you can argue with him. If you don't have that energy, just ignore the message. Not a big deal. To survive on internet, you cannot be sensitive.

If buyer wants to return or cancel a transaction, let him/her return or cancel. Don't force others to accept things that they don't like. They will hate you. Not worth it. Most people are reasonable.

I just don't have the energy to argue, dispute a bad feedback and so on, so I found it better to simply cancel the transaction and relist it. It's not worth the aggravation, and getting into Internet fights will probably come back to bite me in one way or another. No offense to the Colt collectors here, but I have found them being the worst to deal with. If you as much as fart in the wrong direction, you'll be branded as a persona non grata.

There's only one thing less reliable than information from the Internet; and that is unsolicited information from the Internet!

What type of quasi-experts DO you find on this forum??? :)

Its a back - handed compliment that people like you are REAL experts ;)

Many things do not take expertise to tell, just common sense. Don't underestimate common sense :)

Back a few days ago, I had time arguing with a collector on this: who made better quality C96, Mauser or Shansei?

Does that take any gun expertise to tell... don't laugh...

Even if that could be obvious, before make conclusion, still need to list why... 1, 2, 3, etc, putting everything on table.

Depends entirely on your definition of "quality".
Lots of people equate quality with appearance; quality can also be defined as suitability for the job at hand.

In this case, either pistol would be of equal "quality".

Off topic...

Actually, German's wartime finish quality was not high either. But let's put finish aside, and talk about general Mauser vs Chnese copy quality in another thread, as a gun, not as an artifact. I will start another thread tonight.

By his comments, I would doubt he was a Federal Agent, had expertise in firearms or was a professional like he claimed.

Actually, does not matter. He wants that gun, then, that's the price... unless you have a special rate for government employee.

10mm could be interesting.. ammo is expensive.

That is not the question/issue being discussed.

I didn't want to say that, Rich's head will grow too much... :D

I am not now and never have been an expert on anything...and when I run across anyone who claims they are one (like the guides at Hoover Dam) I delight in testing their 'expertise'... :p

I am always amused at the several self-proclaimed 'experts' on the Russian Contract Lugers...Even though they don't own one...I guess that's their argument...If they don't have one, then they don't exist... :rolleyes:

...But I digress... :D

Discussions here often take on a life of their own... :rolleyes:

Yep. Every time you hear somebody say "I know everything about this", you can bet your ass he's lying.

I have a friend who is really smart, he has a masters degree and a PhD in science and he made a long career in R&D for some of the largest companies in the US, plus several years as a teacher and professor's assistant at a university. After he retired, he decided to move back to his home town and start a small handyman business, and that's how most people here know him nowadays.

Once he went to some kind of meeting at the local high school, and the science curriculum was on the agenda. One knows-it-all was going on about something my friend didn't agree with, so he asked her if he could say a few words. She just looked at him and said: "What gives you the right to discuss science, you paint houses!".

My friend got up from his chair, walked up to the blackboard and without saying one word he wrote down his whole pedigree. Then he turned to her and said: "If you have time, I can list my publications..." :D

Back to the OP


I don't have a clue how many times this weapon has been fired, but it for sure has been fired. I would have to disassemble the gun and look at wear patterns, and the degree of wear to even make a WAG. It takes all kinds of folks to make a World, and some of them are "experts", at least in their mind!! :thumbup:

OK. Agree.

Don and I are monitoring each other making sure the other did not go off topic :)

The way I look at things, if you don't like what you see don't bid on it.

Which all comes back to the best advice I've ever seen regarding used firearms:

Believe the gun, discount the story.

Clearly the more experience you have judging a gun by appearance, the better off you are when buying a used firearm.

If you really were trying to be deceptive, you could have easily cleaned all the carbon away using a mild polish. That would, of course, been detectable too for one skilled in such observation...

Visited a small dealer last Friday. The sales person had nothing to do, while I was in the show room, he took down a new short barrel .45 pistol from rack, pulled the slide many times and had fun. "You will create unnecessary scratches" :)

He was helping the first purchaser to "break in" the action!
Very kind of him, and necessary with many of these new short
1911 types- many don't function well for the first xxx rounds.

This type pistol is bought to carry and used, so scratches are of no consequence.

JMHO.:D

Well it sold for $1275 and the buyer is tickled to own it and can't wait to shoot it and carry it. Good for him. :)

Virginity is a state of mind!! It was test fired in the factory!

I agree with you, unfortunately you can find that sort of people in any forum and everywhere in the world.

Sergio

Virginity is overrated. :D

FWIW, I had an exchange with a GB seller of a late war PP. It was a bit "cautious" on his part - and I don't blame him. Gun LOOKS great, but he didn't want to offer a 3 day non-firing inspection period because "shipping's too expensive". I told him that shipping's on me both ways - AND - that I'd buy the gun at his BIN price (which was fair enough) if he'd grant that. He did, albeit with a "reluctant feel". I honestly don't expect to find anything wrong with the gun, he has good pix, and a good rep. But I wanted that security. I also asked him if he thought it was a re-blue (price appropriate for same). He played that one carefully and said "It might be".

The rest of his auctions that I have a vague idea of the value of the item, are pretty much spot on. He might be asking about $25 too much for a Iver-Johnson built "U.S. Revolver" that has issues, but that's because I have one too!

So I think he's a fair enough seller, just being cautious as he doesn't know me from Adam as the saying goes.