LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

It’s been a quiet month for our old guns expert, and Diggory Hadoke has spent it in reflection

THE kind of activity that can be observed going on at the auction houses acts as a barometer for the wider trends in the gun trade in general.

It is difficult to monitor weekly sales, or the lack thereof, in multiple gun shops around the country, but the regularly spaced auctions, which sell a catalogue full of guns in a single day, or perhaps two, do allow for better analysis.

Some of that is counter-intuitive. For example, we often believe that all the British gun sales are going to Americans, but that is not the case. While the US is a likely destination for a lot of them, there are still significant sales in the home market.

Holts’ auction went very well for the Norfolk auctioneers, who had very little left at the end of the day, clearing the decks of boxlocks and hammer guns and getting some strong prices for vintage rifles in the rising magazine rifle category, especially obsolete calibre models.

August, though it is great for grouse shooters, is not that hot a month for auction-goers. We do have some to look forward to later in the autumn: Southams (14th and 16th September), Gavin Gardiner (15th November), Bonhams (23rd November) and Holts (27th and 28th November).

August listings show a smattering of guns, air rifles and deactivated guns at Adam Partridge Auctioneers, Cadmore Auctions, Hansons Auctioneers, Eastbourne Auctions and Anderson & Garland in Newcastle, but nothing to get excited about.

There may not be many guns to whet the appetite but there is taxidermy aplenty at Tennants and at Claydon Auctioneers. You can still buy tiger skins if you can find them and Tennants had two, reserved at £2,500 and £700.

An Asiatic black bear mounted by Theobald Bros could be placed strategically in the downstairs loo to frighten guests for around £1,000.

In the end Diggory’s bear went unsold. Image courtesy of Tennants.

For dedicated collectors, a very unusual mount

For dedicated collectors, a very unusual mount dating to around 1870 looked noteworthy. This is a mock-up of a great auk (made from the parts of guillemots and great northern divers). These were created because great auks were so hard to find for specimens. They were extinct by 1844.

Stories from the time suggest that the Victorian attitude to declining numbers was to hunt them harder in order to bag one before there were none left. People appear to have had no concept of conservation or the evasion of the seemingly inevitable.

Holts November

Holts may not be happening until November but the catalogue is building online already. I noted a good .450 Alex Henry falling-block rifle at £1,500 reserve and a .450 BPE double hammer rifle by the same maker at the same price. This Section 58 Antique category is still selling well, with its non-licensed status making ownership and trade much easier.

I mentioned at the top of this article how auctions act as barometers for the trade and the wider health of the shooting sports. GTN last month showed the latest Home Office figures for FAC and SGC holders in the UK. Both were down significantly, with shotgun ownership dropping by 100,000 since 2014. FAC holders are 4% fewer in number than they were a year ago and RFD numbers have reduced by 6%.

Imagine that every one of those SGC holders had two shotguns (most probably had more). That would represent 200,000 shotguns to be disposed of in a decade. They had to be sold into a market of declining certificate holders. No wonder that Holts’ sealedbids sales have been so huge of late; and they show no sign of slowing.

Sales of cheap secondhand British side-by-sides, unfashionable foreign side-by-sides and semi-autos from the 1970s and 1980s are also now piling up in auctions. The kind of thing my generation saw as teenagers in the back of Shooting Times: Marlin three-shot bolt-action goose guns, Gunmark Kestrels, AYA No.4s, etc. Not to mention the cheap end of the over-and-under market from the same era. These things have very little value in Britain today. However, in volume, they add up to useful sales and Holts make a good business out of piling them exact same percentage applies, by strange coincidence. The life expectancy of a British man born in 1967 (which I was) is 69 years and ten months. That gives me 14 years if I am Mr Average!

Not wishing to be too morbid about it, but that suggests that a lot of guns will be coming onto the market in the next ten years, and there will be fewer buyers to pick them up—factoring in, also, the fact that younger shooters are less interested in classic British guns than my generation. We may be sitting on the edge of a significant shift in supply and de- haps with a five-year implementation period (if we are lucky), a lot of shooters will buy new steel-shotproof guns. That should generate significant sales.

Some old-timers will, doubtless, decide it is time to give up shooting. In both cases, the non-steel -compatible guns that come into the auctions as a result will be huge. Remember, there are 583,000 shotgun certificate holders in possession of multiple guns this very minute.

Many of these guns will be traded in or part exchanged for new guns, but what price will an average, non-steel-shot boxlock or side-lock command when the dealers are flooded with them? These will inevitably be handed over to the auctioneers and appear in congested sales with a lot of similar, largely unwanted kit.

Bright spots

high and selling them cheap. A friend in the trade told me he collected all the single-barrel Cooey, BSA, Franchi, etc, single-barrel 12-bores he could get for £5 or less each. Once he had a pallet load, he could send them to South America and get £25 each for them. On £1,000 guns, if they cost you £5,000 and you sold the load for £25,000 and did so four times a year, you’ve made £80,000 profit, less your slow-boat to Rio shipping costs and some admin.

Licence holders

Other statistical news shows the ages of firearms certificate and SGC holders. 67% of FAC holders are over 50 years old. For shotgun certificates, the mand. I know people continue to buy guns well into their 70s, in fact, I have the customers to prove it. However, many avid shooters reduce their activities as they age and slowly begin to thin out or liquidate their collections.

This might be bad news for the gun trade in general, but our auctioneers happily trade internationally and there are still overseas markets where demand for British guns remains strong, at least for now.

Sugar rush

There may be a sugar rush coming in the form of a lead ban. If, as the GTA believes, that ban will be put on the statutes in the autumn of this year, per-

A couple of bright spots on an otherwise gloomy horizon that should cause a little cheer: the potential of ‘Hortonium’ as a lead substitute in shotgun cartridges and small-calibre rifle bullets (it weighs and costs a little less than bismuth but is as malleable as lead). Also, the quiet confidence I’m hearing expressed that airgun pellets and small-calibre rifles might squeeze through the lead ban.

That would extend the viability of a lot of British shotguns and would head off the dumping of huge numbers of .22 rim-fires in the auctions with no UK buyers for any of them.

These are tough times but it is the grouse season. Before I pen my next article, I will be heading north to scare a few red missiles with my old hammer guns, while I still can. GTN GTN