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Generally expected prices with Webley air pistols doing OK.
Highlights:
All prices are hammer with approximately 30% to be added for costs.
Lot 615 Nice Webley Mk 1 Air Rifle £750
Lot 617 Engraved Webley Senior in amateur made case £420
Lot 620 Post-War Webley Senior in original case with oil can and pellets £2100 ....Wow !
Lot 630 Pre-War Webley Senior in original case with pellets and non-original oil can £1,500 again ..Wow!
Lot 640 Selection of Webley pellet tins and literature £200
Regards
Brian
Award-winning Airgun Anorak
Amazing, Brian. Webley's clearly 'where it's at', right now, price-wise!Originally Posted by Abasmajor
Compare and contrast these two items:
A refinished series 3 Mk2 Service, sold today at Holts for £420 hammer.
A rare EG no.1 rifle, sold yesterday at Anderson & Garland for £420 hammer.
I know which one I'd rather have (no, it wasn't me who bought the EG, sadly. Whoever did, can I have some detailed pics for the gallery, please?).
Holts charges 5% odd more commission too...
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
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i saw the estimate starting at 100.it went for 4x my bid.aside from that it seems strange to have 2 seperate auctions with collectors air pistols within a couple of days of each other,maybe better for the buyers though,
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Being a collector used to mean getting up in the dark to go to car boot sales and being the first buyer on the field, never passing a second hand shop in a strange town, driving 18 miles to the nearest late shop at 11pm to get the first look at the next days free ads, starting work an hour early, so you could nip off late afternoon to view an auction, ferreting around endless antique shops and collectors fairs, doing the rounds of provincial gun shops, endless conversations at farm sales, rummaging through dusty out buildings, biting your tongue and putting up with snooty posh gun shop owners who treated you like some sort of harmless Oik, in front of their wealthy customers because you were buying an old airgun off them, they could hardly be bothered to sell you. Buying all sorts of unwanted airguns just because you had asked people to look out for one for you, waiting weeks with bated breath for somebody to remember to bring their old airgun into work, driving miles on a vague description. Moral dilemma's - through gritted teeth informing decent old people that though I can afford to pay "X", if you advertise it here you will probably get "Y" and them still selling it you anyway, because they appreciate your honesty and want it to go to a good home. Trying to keep a poker face when you have just outsmarted a wise guy. Long and complex deals with other enthusiasts - Meeting wonderful and interesting people along the way - In other words COLLECTING !
Now all you have to do it get your cheque book out ! Though perhaps times have changed with the internet.
Its always been the search and the finding that's fascinated me. Prices like that just take all the fun out of the hobby. Don't get me wrong, good luck to the buyers and sellers - if I sell anything, its generally at the going rate, but £2500 for a cased air pistol is amazing. Unless you are wealthy or single, how can you justify hanging on to stuff that used to be a great hobby and now have become objects d art ?
The Webley air pistol is an object of great beauty, with a fine heritage, clever design and quality manufacture, but unless you are super rich how could you ever justify stomping up that much cash for one. It's a wonderful functional, machine made utilitarian item, with a style intrinsic to the design. You may as well collect hand made English shotguns or you could get ten Bsa improved model D's for that much money.......
Last edited by silva; 20-09-2015 at 09:47 PM.
"helplessly they stare at his tracks......."
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What an excellent post. I am sure many of us will agree with you Silva and I for one miss the old days of looking around provincial gun and second hand shops. I think there has always been an element of a cheque book beating the early riser as the best stuff rarely gets to a dealer's stall and deals are done before the gates even open. However there was always the chance of finding something special in the days before the internet in that out of the way shop or auction. I agree - over £2k for a Webley pistol is hard to justify and I can't see how the buyer would get that sort of investment back anytime soon. Tim Dyson has had a cased Webley on his site for around £1k and I am surprised one or more of the high bidders did not prioritise it over the Holts pistols. For me, the attraction of one of the Holts Webleys was the Monte Carlo trade label but I wasn't going to pay a premium of hundreds, let alone thousands for it.Being a collector used to mean getting up in the dark to go to car boot sales and being the first buyer on the field, never passing a second hand shop in a strange town, driving 18 miles to the nearest late shop at 11pm to get the first look at the next days free ads, starting work an hour early, so you could nip off late afternoon to view an auction, ferreting around endless antique shops and collectors fairs, doing the rounds of provincial gun shops, endless conversations at farm sales, rummaging through dusty out buildings, biting your tongue and putting up with snooty posh gun shop owners who treated you like some sort of harmless Oik, in front of their wealthy customers because you were buying an old airgun off them, they could hardly be bothered to sell you. Buying all sorts of unwanted airguns just because you had asked people to look out for one for you, waiting weeks with bated breath for somebody to remember to bring their old airgun into work, driving miles on a vague description. Moral dilemma's - through gritted teeth informing decent old people that though I can afford to pay "X", if you advertise it here you will probably get "Y" and them still selling it you anyway, because they appreciate your honesty and want it to go to a good home. Trying to keep a poker face when you have just outsmarted a wise guy. Long and complex deals with other enthusiasts - Meeting wonderful and interesting people along the way - In other words COLLECTING !
Now all you have to do it get your cheque book out ! Though perhaps times have changed with the internet.
Its always been the search and the finding that's fascinated me. Prices like that just take all the fun out of the hobby. Don't get me wrong, good luck to the buyers and sellers - if I sell anything, its generally at the going rate, but £2500 for a cased air pistol is amazing. Unless you are wealthy or single, how can you justify hanging on to stuff that used to be a great hobby and now have become objects d art ?
The Webley air pistol is an object of great beauty, with a fine heritage, clever design and quality manufacture, but unless you are super rich how could you ever justify stomping up that much cash for one. It's a wonderful functional, machine made utilitarian item, with a style intrinsic to the design. You may as well collect hand made English shotguns or you could get ten Bsa improved model D's for that much money.......
Thanks again Silva - I really enjoyed reading your thoughts.
John
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Hello Silva,
Hope your well ??
Great post - my thoughts exactly.
Sam
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All things are relative - one day, perhaps 25 years hence, we might look back and think wistfully at how it was possible to pick up cased Webleys so cheaply at auction. Less than 3K for a cased Senior with all the bits, those were the days we will sigh!
To give you a comparison from the classic car world; in the 1970's you could buy an Aston Martin DB5 for about 20K - now nearer 500K!
So maybe £2,730 may prove to be a bit of a shrewd buy?
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Bit like looking through some of the old VAG Adverts Chris - very pricey at the time but now it seems amazing that John Galloway had so many rare guns, many of which just do not turn up these days. I suspect it will be a while before cased Webleys all fetch over £2k though.
John
Registered User
Iv'e tried valuing the individual elements of the 'Senior' set at the the highest prices I have come across and then added a premium for it being a set, but still can't come anywhere near the £2,500 or so paid at Holts.
Maybe it had more to do with two determined bidders not being prepared give way to one another with the cost becoming somewhat irrelevant.
Regards
Brian
Airgun Alchemist, Collector and Scribe
Yes, a great post Silva. Your comment about doing one over on a wise guy made me smile, and made me think.
It would be nice to hear other collectors' experiences along these lines, so to avoid hijacking this thread I have started a new one, asking for people's happy reminiscences about outsmarting the dodgy dealer.
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l go along with the last line, both trying to out do each other, l saw it done many years ago at an antiques auction.
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