Well I Never

Anything Ruger related.
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SPAS 15
Posts: 109
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:31 pm
Location: U.K., yes we can have guns

Well I Never

Post by SPAS 15 »

When i started out on my journey to put together a collection of Red Labels i seemed to be getting nowhere fast in my search so i put out a few hundred, yes hundred, emails to firearms dealers up and down the UK. As i expected a large majority never replied and the few that did said that they had either never seen or had one in their shop or it was many, many years ago since they did.

Thankfully the ones that did reply put my name on file and that was the last time thought i would ever hear from them. Several years passed and i purchased Red Labels from all corners of the U.K., quite a few from Denmark and then a few more from the U.K. Then very recently i got an email from a gun shop in the south west saying that they had just got a Red Label in and were selling it on behalf of a customer who had just returned from the U.S. after working there for several years and would i be interested in buying it.

On request they emailed me a few photos and it was clear to me straight away that this was not the gun for me. It was a wooden furniture model with plain receiver and blacks barrels and was not in a great condition and i had recently purchased three Red Labels of this exact same model for me and friends and did i really want a duplicate when i could use the money for a model i had not yet acquired. The wood furniture had quite a few dints and scratches, the receiver had a couple of nasty very visible scratches and the barrels were pitted with rust for their full length. I replied thanking them but mentioned it was not the gun for me and that it was not worth more than £100 to myself. They then emailed back asking for my advice on a retail price and where would be best to sell it, online or in their shop. Well i never, i did not see that coming, a gun shop asking me for advice on Red Label prices and where to sell it.

I told them that the market for Red Labels in the U.K. was very, very small and when you did find someone who knew Ruger made shotguns that they always wanted the All Weather models. For example on a popular gun classifieds website here in the U.K. there are currently 14,410 shotguns for sale and out of all of those only two are Rugers and they both have wood furniture and they have been on sale for more than six months. There as not been an All Weather model available for sale for quite a while. I said that maybe their customer should have sold it in the U.S. before he came back to the U.K. They replied asking if i knew what age it might be from the serial number which is easy enough and again what i thought it was worth so i told them what i had paid for the three Red Labels i had purchased of this particular model and a mark out of ten for each. I pointed them in the direction of the above mentioned classifieds website and one on there i had seen in person, what it was on sale for, a mark out of ten and that wood furniture models barring a couple of examples generally sell for a lot less than All Weather models.

After a while they emailed me back saying that they had told their customer what i had said and that he was very disappointed. I hope he gets what he wants for his Red Label and i wish him the best of luck.
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