Colt Burgess Lever Action? Value help please

[surffshr]

An old (literally) friend of mine is selling some of his rifles for financial reasons. I didn't realize this until I saw him over the holidays. Upon further inquiry into rifles for sale, I found out another friend of his is acting as a broker of sorts. This concerned me because I don't know the broker, and my friend needed to check with this guy to tell me how much he was asking for these rifles. The old dude is still sharp, but not knowing what someone else was asking for your rifles seems strange to me.

Anyway, I put my eyeball on them and almost had it fall out when an obviously old lever action Colt came out of the closet. At least I guess it is a Colt. Colt's horse is on the receiver and he said it was a Colt. I came home and starting searching for info on the rifle, and I'm fairly confident it is a Colt Burgess Lever Action. Now here is the kicker. He told me the broker said the rifle is worth $15,000 (Yes, I did stop working the action upon hearing this). Is that right? The broker told him he got a $10k offer on it, but turned it down. The information I'm seeing on the web is showing it is worth much less than that, and $10k would be an excellent seller's price.

The other rifles that he has aren't as interesting but they are a Winchester Model 43 in 22 Hornet from the 50's and a Remington 700 25-06 from the early 70's. He told me those where $600 guns which seems a premium as well.

I'd appreciate y'alls help with this. I might buy the 700 just to help a friend, but I don't like someone hanging on false hope of a big pay day when it may not happen.

Thanks and Happy New Year

 

[Mike Faires]

Colt Lever Gun

According to my sources the Colt Burgess in Very Good condition may go for up to $3500 up to $5000 in 90% factory original finish. The only way this gun is worth the amount discussed is if you can document it being shipped to say Custer or Cody or someone else siginificant or it is heavily engraved. Then I think it is stills stretch to put it over $5000. And you still have to find a willing buyer, I think your friends broker may be doing him a disservice. IMHO

 

[JohnBT]

It could be a rare model in excellent condition. For instance, check out items 769, 770 and 771 from this 10/04 listing.

(Auction prices: $11,500, $19,550 and $17,825. At the end of each listing is the pre-auction estimated range. Interesting.)

This is a huge page and might not be dialup friendly. I don't know, I'm on FiOS.

www.jamesdjulia.net/firearm/oct04/firearm_oct04_s2.asp

And that's about all I know about that.

John

 

[Jim K]

Something like that is very hard to sell locally. I strongly recommend your friend call Julia and describe the rifle. Sure, they will take a fee, but the gun will probably bring more than enough with a national market to make up for that.

Jim

 

[surffshr]

Thanks gentlemen. I'll print that auction sheet out so that he can see the variances. Like everything else, it is highly dependent on what exactly it is. I'm going to look harder at the rifle as well to see if it might be one of those 'special' ones.