Reply With QuoteWhatever anyone is willing to pay on the Bay, they are only of interest to collectors really. £10-£30 sounds about right for an 80s airgun curio.
Most shooters on here will recommend you file them in the bin.
Registered User
I have just found two full tins 100 in each of the Sabo pellets in .22 produced by Sussex armoury in the 80's.
They are complete with all the plastic skirts and in original plastic boxes.
Does any one know what they are worth?
There were some on the bay in 2011 for 30 per box.
Thanks for looking any help would be gratefully appreciated.
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
Whatever anyone is willing to pay on the Bay, they are only of interest to collectors really. £10-£30 sounds about right for an 80s airgun curio.
Most shooters on here will recommend you file them in the bin.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
As above they are utter crap, but rare enough now to be slightly collectable. Put them on the bay as an auction and see how you get on
Good deals with these members
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
Or you could try offering them up to BTDT (Jim Tyler) to give a proper modern test in springers and PCPs in his 'Bright Ideas of Yesteryear' series in Airgun World.
Banned
no idea on value but a great blast from the past , totally crap in my springers at the time though. recently cleared out my old room as a boy in my family home and found two of the pens that you use to load them with. Also found a few of the prometheus pellets too . Loved the 80's and early 90's airgun kit
Dodgy Diana User
Sad sack that I am, I would really like to see an objective comparative test of the 80s "wonder pellets" - which would doubtless show they were rubbish, all the ones I tried were - including the Sabo, Prometheus, Titan Black, NATO bullet (IIRC, very good at penetrating metal dustbins, less good at hitting things smaller than a dustbin), Champion Ballistic...Originally Posted by Hsing-ee
Registered User
the accuracy was crap, but the energy retention downrange and the penetration were awesome... in fact I have some, I might do some downrange chrono testing against modern pellets..
Always looking for any cheap, interesting, knackered "project" guns. Thanks, JB.
Registered User
A few years back I did quite well off the bay for two tins, .177?? But had two loading pens and a pamphlet. Sorry, can't remember what I got, but the assortment off odds and sods I had collected over the years made a tidy sum, enough for a good scope.
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
Just a thought, if you have a smoothbore Meteor or something like that, I have a hunch they might actually be more accurate shot through something without any rifling. Weren't the 120mm tank cannons that provided the initial inspiration smoothbore? they fired saboted anti-tank rounds and could kill a T-72 in Poland from the West German border...the accuracy was crap, but the energy retention downrange and the penetration were awesome... in fact I have some, I might do some downrange chrono testing against modern pellets..
Registered User
Do not under any circumstances fire them from a smooth bore. The rifling rates on many airguns are insufficient to provide adequate stability to a soboted round which requires a higher spin rate than a full bore round. I am fairly sure the Sussex Sabo pellets were gyroscopically unstable which accounted for their generally poor performance, something their designers should have known.
The smooth bore tank guns fire fin stabilised rounds called long rods (often referred to as APFSDS) which are a very different animal.
Dodgy Diana User
To be boring, Armour-Piercing Discarded Sabot was invented, though not brought into service, by the French just before WW2. The French guys escaped to the UK, and it was first fielded in late 1944 in the 6 and 17 pounder anti-tank guns. It evolved into APFSDS (Armour-Piercing Fin-Stabilised Discarding Sabot) which is still used in both British rifled tank guns, and US/German smoothbore ones.
First seen in hand weapons as the 1977-vintage Remington Accelerator, which fired a 55 grain .223" bullet from a 30-30, 308", or 30-06. The sales concept was shoot vermin with a deer rifle. The reality was poor accuracy and high cost, just like the slightly later air gun variant (which, IIRC, used a .168" projectile).
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
I remember reading a review of the Accelerator in Guns & Ammo. There is also somewhere an article on a necked down .22-250 which fired some kind of .10 calibre needle, apparently used for shooting dragonflies on the wing. Who would want to do that?
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
Sabo (marketing speak for sabot) means 'shoe' or 'clog'. Which is how accurate they are i.e. equivalent to the hurling of clogs at the target.
Dodgy Diana User
Might that have been the ten smoothbore Winchester 70s used in 1959 by AAI to test the "Cartridge, .22" Caliber, Arrow", as part of the SPIW (Special Purpose Infantry Weapon programme), which fired a 10 grain, 0.72" saboted flechette? The idea being to create a very high cyclic rate, low recoil, small calibre infantry weapon that would give much higher hit probability than anything else known, but ended up being a colossal waste of money?
may also be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocation dingle arm, to reduce sinusoidal repleneration
No, this was a wildcat centrefire rifle round, pretty sure it was the .22/250 and the muzzle velocity was 10,000 fps, hence the ability to hit flying insects. Barrel life must have been short.
The thing you mention was described to me as a 'flechette round' by some young guy that came to my rimfire club in Fife in the 80s. He had a SPAS combat shotgun and claimed to have certain 'military rounds' for it, including some kind of 'bolo' thing with three balls held together by steel thread that would chop a man's hand off, some nasty slug the purpose of which I cannot remember, and the 'flechette' round which must have been the thing you describe. He was in the TA and lost interest in the rimfire club when we told him he couldn't fire his SPAS or his Mini-14 on the 25 yard range. He even had a black transit van, maybe he thought he was in the A-Team. I thought flechettes were the darts delivered by artillery or aircraft, but apparently they can be fired from a shotgun as well. Very nasty idea whoever thought of that one.
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