Keep a written log and receipts organized is a must for firearms and anything valuable. Memory fades with time and if you pass away your spouse gets to disburse the collection. I will not be there to care but I sure hope my children get the cherry pieces and sell the rest for expenses.
Anyone want to see that nice Smith Wesson 27-2, Savage 99, or Remington 81 sold to a pawn shop for $200-300 because “it is not in demand with our tactical crowd”? Got to know the value and resell market.
Doubt it. Going back several generations, no one in my family has owned horses. Other entries for single livestock had measurements such as weight or size or age.
I have the original receipt for the brand new purchase of my 32 s&w jframe for 1968 I believe. I am it’s second owner original purchase was before I was born
I have receipts from the 60s. Dad bought an FN Browning 22 takedown model for my mom that cost more than a month's pay. But he was remote in Alaska, she lived with his parents, and he had a second off books job tending bar and selling popcorn and ww2 beer off base.
I will have to get it out to take a picture. I was gifted a light my sporterized, just the stock really, 1942 Smith Corona 1903a3. The ols. Man who redid the stock incorporated the or original butt plate. In the hole where the cleaning kit should be was the original receipt. Alabama Army Ordinance Depot 1962 $32.00
State of Connecticut sent out hundreds if not thousands of letters from 2014 looking for paper work for transactions? Somebody screwed up!
Not old enough to have receipts from before the 90s. I do have a room full of 50 and 60s wish books with prices though. They were in a house I inherited.
I don't know if I have them all, but certainly most of the original purchase receipts are tucked away behind the foam liners in the cases they came in. I guess I keep them for the unlikely event that I need to prove ownership. Luckily the wife doesn't know where they are.....that would be some incriminating evidence.
I run across them once in a while ... I was selling a Beretta 950 Minx (22 short only)at the last show, guy offered me $450 for it, I paid $165 twenty some years ago ... I saw the receipt in the box and slipped it out.
I found the receipt for the first gun I bought. A heavy Savage 20 ga pump. Got back from SEA in Jul & got this to small game hunt with my buddy. 2020-01-06_07-35-44 by poofy27, on Flickr
A doggone mouse ate the cool Government letterhead on this rcpt. I found it rolled into the buttstock of the gorgeous Model 12 riot gun shown. The fella bought it while on active duty after WWII for $38.50. Too damn cool! Todd.
$125 was a lot of money in those days! Consider that a new Ford sedan's MSRP was $1,440. MSRP for a new Ford Explorer is $32,756 for the base model. The Explorer is 22.75 x more than the 1947 Ford sedan. Using that as a proportion, your dad would have paid $2,843.75 for his Auto 5 today! Some things always hold their value: Coins, guns and tools, to name a few. Many years ago, my grandfather said that the average new car's MSRP was roughly equivalent to the average guy's annual salary. Not too far off, IMHO.
My gun buying didn't begin in earnest until the late 70's but I have most of my receipts. A Colt Python for $325, a S&W M-27 for $200, a Colt Gold Cup for $300, a DCM Garand for $97.50. A Browning High Power for $300. A receipt for a new RockChucker kit for $79. I even have the receipt for my Wife's engagement and wedding rings from 1975. Of course those were all big purchases back then. I was working for chicken scratch back then. Busting truck tires and pumping gas in a service station. I'm still casting bullets with some of the wheel weights that I collected back then!
Not receipts, but after taking the buttplate off my grandfathers Win 10 ga lever action, I found hunting licenses from the 1920's and 30's. Not paper but some type of material like silk or real thin oil cloth. They were good for all manner of critters and water fowl AND deer in OK. No xtra tags. I giess if you carry there you can't forget it at home. My father and uncle, diring the depression, woild, sometimes, get 2 shotgun shells and 6 22 shorts and were expected to bring home dinner for 8. My grand father, a farmer, never weighed over 120 in my lifetime. When I was little I got to go squirrel hunting along the No. Canadian river on grandpa's place. Dad shot one in the top of a cottonwood that wouldn't fall. Grandpa and his 10ga took the top and squirrel off the cottonwood.
I have been keeping all of my bill of sale receipts since I starting buying guns the last 10 to 11 years ago.
