My wife and I hit all the yard and garage sales in our area a couple weekends ago. While I've heard stories of people buying guns at garage sales, I've never seen any firearms for sale at a garage sale myself. I decided to be pro-active though and at every sale I asked if they had any camping or hunting stuff or firearms for sale.
I hit pay dirt at the fourth or fifth sale of the day. One women said she'd inherited a "small revolver" from her Dad a few years ago and still wasn't sure what to do with it. I told her if I saw it, I could at least probably identify it for her and possibly make an offer. She went and got it and it was a S&W Model 49 in about 90% condition. She hadn't decided to sell it yet so I left her my card and told her that if she did ever want to sell it, I would be interested.
A few days later she called and said she'd decided to sell it. We settled on $300 for the gun, the pretty battered original box, a well used Safariland holster and a mostly full box of Western .38 Special ammo.
I picked up the gun tonight. She showed me her Dad's old Michigan Pistol "Safety Inspection" card which showed that he registered the pistol in September 1978. According to her, he used it twice: Once he fired a couple warning shots at a pair of car thieves trying to steal his car in Detroit and another time he grabbed it when a male intruder walked into his house and confronted his wife. He scared the intruder away and no one was injured.
The gun is a 49, no dash, with a serial of J1328xx. Can someone give me an estimated manufacture date?
Oh, and how'd I do for $300? I'm not up on the value of the J frames, but that seemed reasonable.
I hit pay dirt at the fourth or fifth sale of the day. One women said she'd inherited a "small revolver" from her Dad a few years ago and still wasn't sure what to do with it. I told her if I saw it, I could at least probably identify it for her and possibly make an offer. She went and got it and it was a S&W Model 49 in about 90% condition. She hadn't decided to sell it yet so I left her my card and told her that if she did ever want to sell it, I would be interested.
A few days later she called and said she'd decided to sell it. We settled on $300 for the gun, the pretty battered original box, a well used Safariland holster and a mostly full box of Western .38 Special ammo.
I picked up the gun tonight. She showed me her Dad's old Michigan Pistol "Safety Inspection" card which showed that he registered the pistol in September 1978. According to her, he used it twice: Once he fired a couple warning shots at a pair of car thieves trying to steal his car in Detroit and another time he grabbed it when a male intruder walked into his house and confronted his wife. He scared the intruder away and no one was injured.
The gun is a 49, no dash, with a serial of J1328xx. Can someone give me an estimated manufacture date?
Oh, and how'd I do for $300? I'm not up on the value of the J frames, but that seemed reasonable.
