Читать книгу Standard Catalog of Colt Firearms - Rick Sapp - Страница 7

DOING OUR HOMEWORK

Normally, by the time we are old enough to invest in a Walker Colt we have heard “do your homework” applied to everything from schoolwork to the purchase of a new car to proposing to a potential spouse. Right from the start, we never liked homework, even though, paradoxically, we have always known that those who did their homework fared better: got a better price or a better grade or were accepted to a better school.

So we know, secretly but absolutely, in our heart of hearts, that we should avoid the impulse to buy that John Wayne Commemorative at a neighborhood gun show. Of course we enjoyed the movie True Grit, but it does not make you closer to the quiet man to purchase this gun before checking it out and learning its history and speculating honestly about its potential. (And once we have realized that commemorative guns are somewhat like the endless multitude of fishing lures, designed to attract fishermen as well as fish, we can make intelligent decisions about those quirky limited editions.)

So the truth is out there. Somewhere. As collectors and historians it is our duty to find it.

RICK SAPP

MARCH 2007

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA

PS: A NOTE ABOUT AUCTION RESULTS:

Throughout this book I have attempted to demonstrate the volatility of the Colt market by including internet auction results where appropriate. Sometimes the auction results gibe with the given value of guns in similar condition; sometimes they do not. Does this mean that the values I have cited are incorrect? No. It does, however, demonstrate the wide variations that sometimes occur in individual real-life auctions. I believe that the values cited in this book represent the average values that the reader will encounter, not only in internet auctions, but in retail gun shops and at local gun shows.

Happy hunting!