S/42G opinions.

Absolut said:
Well. Changing the description according to some reactions in here was more than what they had expected from RIA :D .
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RIA should have a banner on their homepage that reads:

“We are Really F-ing Proud to Auction Pimpshined Rifles for Top Dollar”

with the Humpty Dance Video and Music playing.
 
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The whole episode is a testament to greed. Some asshole got the bolt humped and then it ended up at Legacy Collectibles. I will see if I can get a screenshot of the Youtube video where it magically reappears as a matching G date.
 
Jawoj_71 said:
This whole video makes me feel gross, it's just slop for the lowest common denomination of "collectors".
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I'm kind of a broken record about this, I know I've mentioned it in more than a few places, but I think the sort of person who has a bookshelf full of reference books and spends time posting on this kind of forum loses sight of the fact that we're not the bulk of the hobby. I think a lot of us also lose sight of the fact that the world is full of people who have a lot of money and who like to get into stuff like this. Back in the day it used to be the doctor/dentist/lawyer crowd but these days it's just as likely to be some 30-something computer engineer who draws a fat six figure salary or got luck on an IPO>

Pretty much every hobby you care to name has those people. Sometimes they're the money-spending backbone of it. You've got the car nerd painstakingly restoring on a '57 Chevy that he wrenches on himself, and then you've got Jay Leno with a garage bigger than most people's houses. That type of collector very much cares about a nice presentation, and they very much want to feel like they are buying from an expert who can vet that the purchase is authentic. And yes, this means that fraud abounds. Art and rare book collecting in particular are notorious for forgery scandals. Classic car collecting has a lot of the same problems with "survivor" (unrestored) vehicles not actually being original condition as you see with humped rifles.

And, at the end of the day, even if a rifle costs $5k this is still a much cheaper hobby than many of those are. A single classic car puts you well into transferable MG territory. For a lot of people the difference between spending $2k and $5k on a rifle is more or less a rounding error. Maybe they'll be annoyed if they find out, but on about the same level as I'm mildly annoyed that I found a reference book that I just bought for $45 someplace else a week later for $25.

That's the group that outfits like RIA (and to a lesser extent, the big name GB guys like SRiesel, LSB, etc) exist to serve. It's a big part of why I just shrug when I see auctions get stupid.
 
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