Getting back grandpas gun

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Appalachiannative

Appalachiannative

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So my old man pawned grandpa's old JC Higgins .30-30 lever gun when he was a young man. I've never seen it since this was before I was born. Dad said as a teen, a stupid one at that, he forced a .270 into the chamber and pulled the trigger. It went off but never worked again. Now my father claims he took it too a pawn shop in Asheville and passed it off as functioning. Well all these years later he claims he found it browsing a pawn shop in etowah. Said it had a letter hand carved into the stock that he remembered grandpa putting in there so he knows it was the same one but said he wouldn't pay the $500 asking price to get it back. Now he's not very sentimental and neither am I but we don't have ANY of grandpa's gun collection. The old man pawned it all. Don't want to get into why. So does anyone think it would be worth it? Could the weapon have been repaired? Or has it been getting passed around all these years because it's junk? Also is that price unreasonable? I just don't want to shell out money for something that don't work even if it is Sentimental
 
Appalachiannative said:
I just don't want to shell out money for something that don't work even if it is Sentimental
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I think you just asked and answered your own question.

However...

$500 might, to my eyes, be a tad high for a JC Higgins, but I'm a Winchester guy, and I could see any Model 94 taking that price.

Could it have been repaired? Possibly. I'm not even sure what damage a 270 round would cause in a 30-30.

Back to your last question, if someone told me my grandfather's (or my dad's for that matter) gun was in the local pawn shop for $500...I'd get that 500 someplace somehow, and I'd be in that shop the moment they opened the door the next day. But that's just me.

In any event, the way guns are selling right now, don't think too long; this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Once that rifle sells, you'll never see it again.

Even if you buy it and regret it later, you can still pawn it off again. Like grandfather, like grandson.
 
D.B. Cooper said:
I think you just asked and answered your own question.

However...

$500 might, to my eyes, be a tad high for a JC Higgins, but I'm a Winchester guy, and I could see any Model 94 taking that price.

Could it have been repaired? Possibly. I'm not even sure what damage a 270 round would cause in a 30-30.

Back to your last question, if someone told me my grandfather's (or my dad's for that matter) gun was in the local pawn shop for $500...I'd get that 500 someplace somehow, and I'd be in that shop the moment they opened the door the next day. But that's just me.

In any event, the way guns are selling right now, don't think too long; this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Once that rifle sells, you'll never see it again.

Even if you buy it and regret it later, you can still pawn it off again. Like grandfather, like grandson.
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Good point. Sadly I'm all tapped out because of the Holiday. If I go in there and it's gone no big deal. Everyone of grandpa's rifles had the carving I've been told so I might find another. He liked to put the first letter of our last name on stuff
 
If you're tapped out, you're tapped out. You said if you miss out on the opportunity, it's no big deal. Sounds like you've already made up your mind.

If it were me in your shoes, I'd pass on the gun I couldn't afford and didn't care if I missed out on.
 
GravelRider said:
If you're tapped out, you're tapped out. You said if you miss out on the opportunity, it's no big deal. Sounds like you've already made up your mind.

If it were me in your shoes, I'd pass on the gun I couldn't afford and didn't care if I missed out on.
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Probably what I'll do. I get paid in 2 weeks maybe have a look then
 
Whether you get the rifle back or not thats a cool story! Like the others, I don't see a 270 being chambered in a 30-30. Good Luck with whatever you decide.
 
DustyGmt said:
Appalachia. Nuff said? Jk. No offense.......:D
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None taken. I know a guy that made a barrel insert for his 12 gauge so he could use .209 primers to fire steel BBs threw it. Same lunatic once blew his thumb off with a home made fire cracker made from a .30-06 case and he also rams short arrows down the barrel and into the chamber of a cap an ball revolver to shoot them. He is a childhood friend of my father
 
I would want to get it for the remembrance but I would also have a heart to heart talk with the storekeeper about a guarantee that it would shoot.

I once looked hard at a J.C. Higgins .30-30. It was made by Marlin with no corners cut that I could see except that it had a Monte Carlo stock which looks funky on a lever action and standard six groove rifling instead of Microgroove. Which was an advantage to me, I planned to shoot cast bullets in it. But I passed on it in favor of a Remington.
 
Appalachiannative said:
None taken. I know a guy that made a barrel insert for his 12 gauge so he could use .209 primers to fire steel BBs threw it. Same lunatic once blew his thumb off with a home made fire cracker made from a .30-06 case and he also rams short arrows down the barrel and into the chamber of a cap an ball revolver to shoot them. He is a childhood friend of my father
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We all have to experiment from time to time, now a .270 in a 30-30, I'll leave that to other folks. I did shoot a few .40 S&W rounds through a G20 10mm once, just to see and it went well. Put them all in the center of my target and no damage to the gun that I could observe.

I've also had some lil homemade cannons that might not have been the wisest to fool around with but I was in my late teens and was bored so...... still have all my digits. Not like a neighbor down the road who had to be airlifted because he liked to make pipe bombs and set em off. Same guy who walked around town for about a month with a huge bandage/cast arrangement that looked like a giant pamper because he was drunk as a skunk and walked into his house, dropped trou and confused his piping hot wood stove with the john, 3rd degree burns and a few skin graphs later......
 
Jim Watson said:
I would want to get it for the remembrance but I would also have a heart to heart talk with the storekeeper about a guarantee that it would shoot.

I once looked hard at a J.C. Higgins .30-30. It was made by Marlin with no corners cut that I could see except that it had a Monte Carlo stock which looks funky on a lever action and standard six groove rifling instead of Microgroove. Which was an advantage to me, I planned to shoot cast bullets in it. But I passed on it in favor of a Remington.
Click to expand...
I've never seen a Marlin lever action with any style of stock but monte Carlo
 
DustyGmt said:
I did shoot a few .40 S&W rounds through a G20 10mm once, just to see and it went well. Put them all in the center of my target and no damage to the gun that I could observe.

.
Click to expand...
this is the rough equivalent of shooting .38 Specials in a .357 chamber and is completely safe as long as your extractor is functioning.
 
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