[Edward Tinker]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Originally posted by Michael Zeleny:
<strong>But if you insist on regarding it the same way, I question the ethics of adding rework marks not correlated with the safety certification of firing proof loads. Should Mona Lisa be so marked after every cleaning?</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Geneva">Michael, I understand what you are saying and I wouldn't say I am a purest collector. But in the gun collecting fraternity, and specifically in the Luger field, re-worked (non-arsenal to me), re-blued, tampered with, and items changed on a Luger drops the value from a collector to a shooter status.

My 1966 Mustang has had repro parts put on it, and it's value is not as high as if I had used all OEM parts or it was pristine to start with. But when I got it, it had mis-matched door panels, replaced door, etc., so it was smart to re-paint, add correct parts etc. The value of my mustang went up, but not dramatically. Now, if you take a pristine, but 1950 era nickled WW2 Luger, worth maybe $400, then de-nickle it, reblue it, you have spent another several hundred to four hundred dollars, but have increased its value to maybe $500, so you have lost money.

So, to repeat myself, in the gun collecting, but specifically, the Luger collecting field, to reblue or boost a gun brings the value up very little.

Although a good cleaning, is not in the same category, most collectors I have talked to have no problem with cleaning a nasty pair of grips, scrubbing the bore, cleaning the metal, but any further, such as cold blue or touch up is considered boosting and unethical. So Ted or others adding a mark after it has been "fixed" appears ethical to me? He is trying to keep his restored Luger from being sold 10 years from now as a 98% gun, when it was a 90% with a problem.

Ed