A very interesting post.

Prior to the launch of Airgun World, most UK gun shops stocked BSA or Webley, with the occasional Haenel 303 or HW35, so most people only ever saw and so only bought BSA and Webley.

Airgun World changed everything by making people aware that there were other air rifles on the market, and that must have had a huge impact on the sales of West German air rifles. IIRC, the 'big three' aspirational air rifles were the FWB Sport, the HW35 and the BSF55/60/70, and I suspect that the late 1970s probably saw the peak in BSF sales, though I don't think that even then they came anywhere near FWB Sport or HW35 sales figures.

As far as power is concerned, very few people (even few gun shops) had the means to measure it, and owners of other air rifles were probably unaware just how low their power was, but were happy if their high penetration pellets went through enough pages of a telephone directory. The Webley Vulcan and HW80 would have taken a lot of sales from BSF, because not only did they match it for power but both by then had far better trade distribution.

In the early 1980s, my own observations suggest that the BSF could not have been selling in anything like the quantities that the Weihrauch, FWB Sport and British air riles did, because in those early days of FT before anyone took it too seriously and people turned up at club events with everything from Tornados to Normay Vixens and the like, I recall rarely seeing BSF air rifles.

As FT took off, people simply HAD to have a Weihrauch, FWB Sport (usually prepped by Venom or Airmasters) or - if you didn't want to run with the herd - an Original 45. BSF simply weren't in it.

That's a very long-winded way of saying that I don't think the BSF ever sold in any quantity in the UK. Given that the peak sales occurred a quarter of a century ago, perhaps it's little wonder that so few appear to be around today.

I owned a BSF55 in the late '70s and liked it immensely, though I found that I shot more accurately with other air rifles, and eventually sold it. It seemed very robust, but I do wonder how many were damaged following DIY 'tuning' or even induced dieseling courtesy of the old 3-in-1 through the transfer port.